Johnson was born in poverty in Raleigh, North Carolina. Apprenticed as a tailor, he worked in several frontier towns before settling in Greeneville, Tennessee. He served as alderman and mayor there before being elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1835. After brief service in the Tennessee Senate, Johnson was elected to the federal House of Representatives in 1843, where he served five two-year terms. He became Governor of Tennessee for four years, and was elected by the legislature to the U.S. Senate in 1857. In his congressional service, he sought passage of the Homestead Bill, which was enacted soon after he left his Senate seat in 1862. As Southern slave states, including Tennessee, seceded to form the Confederate States of America, Johnson remained firmly with the Union. He was the only sitting senator from a Confederate state who did not resign his seat upon learning of his state's secession. In 1862, Lincoln appointed him as military governor of Tennessee after most of it had been retaken. In 1864, Johnson, as a War Democrat and Southern Unionist, was a logical choice as running mate for Lincoln, who wished to send a message of national unity in his re-election campaign; their ticket easily won. When Johnson was sworn in as vice president in March 1865, he gave a rambling speech, after which he secluded himself to avoid public ridicule. Six weeks later, the assassination of Lincoln made him president.

Johnson implemented his own form of Presidential Reconstruction – a series of proclamations directing the seceded states to hold conventions and elections to re-form their civil governments. When Southern states returned many of their old leaders, and passed Black Codes to deprive the freedmen of many civil liberties, Congressional Republicans refused to seat legislators from those states and advanced legislation to overrule the Southern actions. Johnson vetoed their bills, and Congressional Republicans overrode him, setting a pattern for the remainder of his presidency.[3] Johnson opposed the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave citizenship to former slaves. In 1866, Johnson went on an unprecedented national tour promoting his executive policies, seeking to destroy his Republican opponents.[4] As the conflict between the branches of government grew, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, restricting Johnson's ability to fire Cabinet officials. When he persisted in trying to dismiss Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, he was impeached by the House of Representatives, and narrowly avoided conviction in the Senate and removal from office. After failing to win the 1868 Democratic presidential nomination, Johnson left office in 1869.

Returning to Tennessee after his presidency, Johnson sought political vindication, and gained it in his eyes when he was elected to the Senate again in 1875, making Johnson the only former president to serve in the Senate. He died just months into his term. While some admire Johnson's strict constitutionalism,[5] his strong opposition to federally guaranteed rights for African Americans is widely criticized. He is regarded by many historians as one of the worst presidents in American history.

Andrew Johnson was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, on December 29, 1808, to Jacob Johnson (1778–1812) and Mary ("Polly") McDonough (1783–1856), a laundress. He was of English, Scottish, and Irish ancestry.[6] He had a brother William, four years his senior, and an older sister Elizabeth, who died in childhood. Johnson's birth in a log cabin was a political asset in the mid-19th century, and he would frequently remind voters of his humble origins.[7] Jacob Johnson was a poor man, as had been his father, William Johnson, but he became town constable of Raleigh before marrying and starting a family. He died of an apparent heart attack while ringing the town bell, shortly after rescuing three drowning men, when his son Andrew was three.[8] Polly Johnson worked as a washerwoman and became the sole support of her family. Her occupation was then looked down on, as it often took her into other homes unaccompanied. There were even rumors that Andrew, who did not resemble his brother or sister, had been fathered by another man. Polly Johnson eventually remarried, to Turner Doughtry, who was as poor as she was.[9]

Johnson's mother apprenticed her son William to a tailor, James Selby. Andrew also became an apprentice in Selby's shop at age ten and was legally bound to serve until his 21st birthday. Johnson lived with his mother for part of his service, and one of Selby's employees taught him rudimentary literacy skills.[10] His education was augmented by citizens who would come to Selby's shop to read to the tailors as they worked. Even before he became an apprentice, Johnson came to listen. The readings caused a lifelong love of learning, and one of his biographers, Annette Gordon-Reed, suggests that Johnson, later a gifted public speaker, learned the art as he threaded needles and cut cloth.[11]

Johnson was not happy at James Selby's, and after about five years, both he and his brother ran away. Selby responded by placing a reward for their return: "Ten Dollars Reward. Ran away from the subscriber, two apprentice boys, legally bound, named William and Andrew Johnson ... [payment] to any person who will deliver said apprentices to me in Raleigh, or I will give the above reward for Andrew Johnson alone."[12] The brothers went to Carthage, North Carolina, where Andrew Johnson worked as a tailor for several months. Fearing he would be arrested and returned to Raleigh, Johnson moved to Laurens, South Carolina. He found work quickly, met his first love, Mary Wood, and made her a quilt as a gift. However, she rejected his marriage proposal. He returned to Raleigh, hoping to buy out his apprenticeship, but could not come to terms with Selby. Unable to stay in Raleigh, where he risked being apprehended for abandoning Selby, he decided to move west.[13][14]

Johnson left North Carolina for Tennessee, traveling mostly on foot. After a brief period in Knoxville, he moved to Mooresville, Alabama.[13][15] He then worked as a tailor in Columbia, Tennessee, but was called back to Raleigh by his mother and stepfather, who saw limited opportunities there and who wished to emigrate west. Johnson and his party traveled through the Blue Ridge Mountains to Greeneville, Tennessee. Andrew Johnson fell in love with the town at first sight, and when he became prosperous purchased the land where he had first camped and planted a tree in commemoration.[16]

In Greeneville, Johnson established a successful tailoring business in the front of his home. In 1827, at the age of 18, he married 16-year-old Eliza McCardle, the daughter of a local shoemaker. The pair were married by Justice of the Peace Mordecai Lincoln, first cousin of Thomas Lincoln, whose son would become president. The Johnsons were married for almost 50 years and had five children: Martha (1828), Charles (1830), Mary (1832), Robert (1834), and Andrew Jr. (1852). Though she suffered from Tuberculosis, Eliza supported her husband's endeavors. She taught him mathematics skills and tutored him to improve his writing.[17][18] Shy and retiring by nature, Eliza Johnson usually remained in Greeneville during Johnson's political rise. She was not often seen during her husband's presidency; their daughter Martha usually served as official hostess.[19]

Johnson's tailoring business prospered during the early years of the marriage, enabling him to hire help and giving him the funds to invest profitably in real estate.[20] He later boasted of his talents as a tailor, "my work never ripped or gave way."[21] He was a voracious reader. Books about famous orators aroused his interest in political dialogue, and he had private debates on the issues of the day with customers who held opposing views. He also took part in debates at Greeneville College.[22]

Johnson helped organize a mechanics' (working men's) ticket in the 1829 Greeneville municipal election. He was elected town alderman, along with his friends Blackston McDannel and Mordecai Lincoln.[23][24] Following the 1831 Nat Turner slave rebellion, a state convention was called to pass a new constitution, including provisions to disenfranchise free people of color. The convention also wanted to reform real estate tax rates, and provide ways of funding improvements to Tennessee's infrastructure. The constitution was submitted for a public vote, and Johnson spoke widely for its adoption; the successful campaign provided him with statewide exposure. On January 4, 1834, his fellow aldermen elected him mayor of Greeneville.[25][26]

Eliza McCardle Johnson

In 1835, Johnson made a bid for election to the "floater" seat which Greene County shared with neighboring Washington County in the Tennessee House of Representatives. According to his biographer, Hans L. Trefousse, Johnson "demolished" the opposition in debate and won the election with almost a two to one margin.[27][28] Soon after taking his seat, Johnson purchased his first slave, Dolly, aged 14. Dolly had three children over the years. Johnson had the reputation of treating his slaves kindly, and the fact that Dolly was dark-skinned, and her offspring much lighter, led to speculation both during and after his lifetime that he was the father.[29] During his Greeneville days, Johnson joined the Tennessee Militia as a member of the 90th Regiment. He attained the rank of colonel, though while an enrolled member, Johnson was fined for an unknown offense.[30] Afterwards, he was often addressed or referred to by his rank.

In his first term in the legislature, which met in the state capital of Nashville, Johnson did not consistently vote with either the Democratic or the newly formed Whig Party, though he revered President Andrew Jackson, a Democrat and Tennessean. The major parties were still determining their core values and policy proposals, with the party system in a state of flux. The Whig Party had organized in opposition to Jackson, fearing the concentration of power in the Executive Branch of the government; Johnson differed from the Whigs as he opposed more than minimal government spending and spoke against aid for the railroads, while his constituents hoped for improvements in transportation. After Brookins Campbell and the Whigs defeated Johnson for re-election in 1837, Johnson would not lose another race for thirty years. In 1839, he sought to regain his seat, initially as a Whig, but when another candidate sought the Whig nomination, he ran as a Democrat and was elected. From that time he supported the Democratic party and built a powerful political machine in Greene County.[31][32] Johnson became a strong advocate of the Democratic Party, noted for his oratory, and in an era when public speaking both informed the public and entertained it, people flocked to hear him.[33]

In 1840, Johnson was selected as a presidential elector for Tennessee, giving him more statewide publicity. Although Democratic President Martin Van Buren was defeated by former Ohio senator William Henry Harrison, Johnson was instrumental in keeping Tennessee and Greene County in the Democratic column.[34] He was elected to the Tennessee Senate in 1841, where he served a two-year term.[35] He had achieved financial success in his tailoring business, but sold it to concentrate on politics. He had also acquired additional real estate, including a larger home and a farm (where his mother and stepfather took residence), and among his assets numbered eight or nine slaves.[36]

Having served in both houses of the state legislature, Johnson saw election to Congress as the next step in his political career. He engaged in a number of political maneuvers to gain Democratic support, including the displacement of the Whig postmaster in Greeneville, and defeated Jonesborough lawyer John A. Aiken by 5,495 votes to 4,892.[37][38] In Washington, he joined a new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. Johnson advocated for the interests of the poor, maintained an anti-abolitionist stance, argued for only limited spending by the government and opposed protective tariffs.[39] With Eliza remaining in Greeneville, Congressman Johnson shunned social functions in favor of study in the Library of Congress.[40] Although a fellow Tennessee Democrat, James K. Polk, was elected president in 1844, and Johnson had campaigned for him, the two men had difficult relations, and President Polk refused some of his patronage suggestions.[41]

Johnson believed, as did many Southern Democrats, that the Constitution protected private property, including slaves, and thus prohibited the federal and state governments from abolishing slavery.[42] He won a second term in 1845 against Wiliam G. Brownlow, presenting himself as the defender of the poor against the aristocracy. In his second term, Johnson supported the Polk administration's decision to fight the Mexican War, seen by some Northerners as an attempt to gain territory to expand slavery westward, and opposed the Wilmot Proviso, a proposal to ban slavery in any territory gained from Mexico. He introduced for the first time his Homestead Bill, to grant 160 acres (65 ha) to people willing to settle the land and gain title to it.[43][44] This issue was especially important to Johnson because of his own humble beginnings.[43][45]

In the presidential election of 1848, the Democrats split over the slavery issue, and abolitionists formed the Free Soil Party, with former president Van Buren as their nominee. Johnson supported the Democratic candidate, former Michigan senator Lewis Cass. With the party split, Whig nominee General Zachary Taylor was easily victorious, and carried Tennessee.[46] Johnson's relations with Polk remained poor; the President recorded of his final New Year's reception in 1849 that

Among the visitors I observed in the crowd today was Hon. Andrew Johnson of the Ho. Repts. [House of Representatives] Though he represents a Democratic District in Tennessee (my own State) this is the first time I have seen him during the present session of Congress. Professing to be a Democrat, he has been politically, if not personally hostile to me during my whole term. He is very vindictive and perverse in his temper and conduct. If he had the manliness and independence to declare his opposition openly, he knows he could not be elected by his constituents. I am not aware that I have ever given him cause for offense.[47]

Johnson, due to national interest in new railroad construction and in response to the need for better transportation in his own district, also supported government assistance for the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad.[48]

The Andrew Johnson House, built in 1851, Greeneville, Tennessee

In his campaign for a fourth term, Johnson concentrated on three issues: slavery, homesteads and judicial elections. He defeated his opponent, Nathaniel G. Taylor, in August 1849, with a greater margin of victory than in previous campaigns. When the House convened in December, the party division caused by the Free Soil Party precluded the formation of the majority needed to elect a Speaker. Johnson proposed adoption of a rule allowing election of a Speaker by a plurality; some weeks later others took up a similar proposal, and Democrat Howell Cobb was elected.[49]

Once the Speaker election had concluded and Congress was ready to conduct legislative business, the issue of slavery took center stage. Northerners sought to admit California, a free state, to the Union. Kentucky's Henry Clay introduced in the Senate a series of resolutions, the Compromise of 1850, to admit California and pass legislation sought by each side. Johnson voted for all the provisions except for the abolition of slavery in the nation's capital.[50] He pressed resolutions for constitutional amendments to provide for popular election of senators (then elected by state legislatures) and of the president (chosen by the Electoral College), and limiting the tenure of federal judges to 12 years. These were all defeated.[51]

A group of Democrats nominated Landon Carter Haynes to oppose Johnson as he sought a fifth term; the Whigs were so pleased with the internecine battle among the Democrats in the general election that they did not nominate a candidate of their own. The campaign included fierce debates: Johnson's main issue was the passage of the Homestead Bill; Haynes contended it would facilitate abolition. Johnson won the election by more than 1600 votes.[51] Though he was not enamored of the party's presidential nominee in 1852, former New Hampshire senator Franklin Pierce, Johnson campaigned for him. Pierce was elected, but he failed to carry Tennessee.[52] In 1852, Johnson managed to get the House to pass his Homestead Bill, but it failed in the Senate.[53] The Whigs had gained control of the Tennessee legislature, and, under the leadership of Gustavus Henry, redrew the boundaries of Johnson's First District to make it a safe seat for their party. The Nashville Union termed this "Henry-mandering";[b][54] lamented Johnson, "I have no political future."[55]

If Johnson considered retiring from politics upon deciding not to seek re-election, he soon changed his mind.[56] His political friends began to maneuver to get him the nomination for governor. The Democratic convention unanimously named him, though some party members were not happy at his selection. The Whigs had won the past two gubernatorial elections, and still controlled the legislature.[57] That party nominated Henry, making the "Henry-mandering" of the First District an immediate issue.[57] The two men debated in county seats the length of Tennessee before the meetings were called off two weeks before the August 1853 election due to illness in Henry's family.[56][58] Johnson won the election by 63,413 votes to 61,163; some votes for him were cast in return for his promise to support Whig Nathaniel Taylor for his old seat in Congress.[59][60]

Tennessee's governor had little power: Johnson could propose legislation but not veto it, and most appointments were made by the Whig-controlled legislature. Nevertheless, the office was a "bully pulpit" that allowed him to publicize himself and his political views.[61] He succeeded in getting the appointments he wanted in return for his endorsement of John Bell, a Whig, for one of the state's U.S. Senate seats. In his first biennial speech, Johnson urged simplification of the state judicial system, abolition of the Bank of Tennessee, and establishment of an agency to provide uniformity in weights and measures; the last was passed. Johnson was critical of the Tennessee common school system and suggested funding be increased via taxes, either statewide or county by county—a mixture of the two was passed.[62] Reforms carried out during Johnson's time as governor included the foundation of the State's public library (making books available to all) and its first public school system, and the initiation of regular state fairs to benefit craftsmen and farmers.[63]

Although the Whig Party was on its final decline nationally, it remained strong in Tennessee, and the outlook for Democrats there in 1855 was poor. Feeling that re-election as governor was necessary to give him a chance at the higher offices he sought, Johnson agreed to make the run. Meredith P. Gentry received the Whig nomination. A series of more than a dozen vitriolic debates ensued. The issues in the campaign were slavery, the prohibition of alcohol, and the nativist positions of the Know Nothing Party. Johnson favored the first, but opposed the others. Gentry was more equivocal on the alcohol question, and had gained the support of the Know Nothings, a group Johnson portrayed as a secret society.[64] Johnson was unexpectedly victorious, albeit with a narrower margin than in 1853.[65]

When the presidential election of 1856 approached, Johnson hoped to be nominated; some Tennessee county conventions designated him a "favorite son". His position that the best interests of the Union were served by slavery in some areas made him a practical compromise candidate for president. He was never a major contender; the nomination fell to former Pennsylvania senator James Buchanan. Though he was not impressed by either, Johnson campaigned for Buchanan and his running mate, John C. Breckinridge, who were elected.[66]

Johnson decided not to seek a third term as governor, with an eye towards election to the U.S. Senate. In 1857, while returning from Washington, his train derailed, causing serious damage to his right arm. This injury would trouble him in the years to come.[67]

The victors in the 1857 state legislative campaign would, once they convened in October, elect a United States Senator. Former Whig governor William B. Campbell wrote to his uncle, "The great anxiety of the Whigs is to elect a majority in the legislature so as to defeat Andrew Johnson for senator. Should the Democrats have the majority, he will certainly be their choice, and there is no man living to whom the Americans[c] and Whigs have as much antipathy as Johnson."[68] The governor spoke widely in the campaign, and his party won the gubernatorial race and control of the legislature.[69] Johnson's final address as governor gave him the chance to influence his electors, and he made proposals popular among Democrats. Two days later the legislature elected him to the Senate. The opposition was appalled, with the Richmond Whig newspaper referring to him as "the vilest radical and most unscrupulous demagogue in the Union."[70]

Johnson gained high office due to his proven record as a man popular among the small farmers and self-employed tradesmen who made up much of Tennessee's electorate. He called them the "plebeians"; he was less popular among the planters and lawyers who led the state Democratic Party, but none could match him as a vote-getter. After his death, one Tennessee voter wrote of him, "Johnson was always the same to everyone ... the honors heaped upon him did not make him forget to be kind to the humblest citizen."[71] Always seen in impeccably tailored clothing, he cut an impressive figure,[72] and had the stamina to endure lengthy campaigns with daily travel over bad roads leading to another speech or debate. Mostly denied the party's machinery, he relied on a network of friends, advisers, and contacts.[55] One friend, Hugh Douglas, stated in a letter to him, "you have been in the way of our would be great men for a long time. At heart many of us never wanted you to be Governor only none of the rest of us Could have been elected at the time and we only wanted to use you. Then we did not want you to go to the Senate but the people would send you."[73]

The new senator took his seat when Congress convened in December 1857 (the term of his predecessor, James C. Jones, had expired in March). He came to Washington as usual without his wife and family; Eliza would visit Washington only once during Johnson's first time as senator, in 1860. Johnson immediately set about introducing the Homestead Bill in the Senate, but as most senators who supported it were Northern (many associated with the newly founded Republican Party), the matter became caught up in suspicions over the slavery issue. Southern senators felt that those who took advantage of the provisions of the Homestead Bill were more likely to be Northern non-slaveholders. The issue of slavery had been complicated by the Supreme Court's ruling earlier in the year in Dred Scott v. Sandford that slavery could not be prohibited in the territories. Johnson, a slaveholding senator from a Southern state, made a major speech in the Senate the following May in an attempt to convince his colleagues that the Homestead Bill and slavery were not incompatible. Nevertheless, Southern opposition was key to defeating the legislation, 30–22.[74][75] In 1859, it failed on a procedural vote when Vice President Breckinridge broke a tie against the bill, and in 1860, a watered-down version passed both houses, only to be vetoed by Buchanan at the urging of Southerners.[76] Johnson continued his opposition to spending, chairing a committee to control it.

He argued against funding to build Washington, D.C.'s infrastructure, stating that it was unfair to expect state citizens to pay for the city's streets, even if it was the seat of government. He opposed spending money for troops to put down the revolt by the Mormons in Utah Territory, arguing for temporary volunteers as the United States should not have a standing army.[77]

In October 1859, abolitionist John Brown and sympathizers raided the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (today West Virginia). Tensions in Washington between pro- and anti-slavery forces increased greatly. Johnson gave a major speech in the Senate in December, decrying Northerners who would endanger the Union by seeking to outlaw slavery. The Tennessee senator stated that "all men are created equal" from the Declaration of Independence did not apply to African Americans, since the Constitution of Illinois contained that phrase—and that document barred voting by African Americans.[78][79]

Johnson hoped that he would be a compromise candidate for the presidential nomination as the Democratic Party tore itself apart over the slavery question. Busy with the Homestead Bill during the 1860 Democratic National Convention in Charleston, South Carolina, he sent two of his sons and his chief political adviser to represent his interests in the backroom deal-making. The convention deadlocked, with no candidate able to gain the required two-thirds vote, but the sides were too far apart to consider Johnson as a compromise. The party split, with Northerners backing Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas while Southerners, including Johnson, supported Vice President Breckinridge for president. With former Tennessee senator John Bell running a fourth-party candidacy and further dividing the vote, the Republican Party elected its first president, former Illinois representative Abraham Lincoln. The election of Lincoln, known to be against the spread of slavery, was unacceptable to many in the South. Although secession from the Union had not been an issue in the campaign, talk of it began in the Southern states.[80][81]

Johnson took to the Senate floor after the election, giving a speech well received in the North, "I will not give up this government ... No; I intend to stand by it ... and I invite every man who is a patriot to ... rally around the altar of our common country ... and swear by our God, and all that is sacred and holy, that the Constitution shall be saved, and the Union preserved."[82][83] As Southern senators announced they would resign if their states seceded, he reminded Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis that if Southerners would only hold to their seats, the Democrats would control the Senate, and could defend the South's interests against any infringement by Lincoln.[84] Gordon-Reed points out that while Johnson's belief in an indissoluble Union was sincere, he had alienated Southern leaders, including Davis, who would soon be the president of the Confederate States of America, formed by the seceding states. If the Tennessean had backed the Confederacy, he would have had small influence in its government.[85]

Johnson returned home when his state took up the issue of secession. His successor as governor, Isham G. Harris, and the legislature organized a referendum on whether to have a constitutional convention to authorize secession; when that failed, they put the question of leaving the Union to a popular vote. Despite threats on Johnson's life, and actual assaults, he campaigned against both questions, sometimes speaking with a gun on the lectern before him. Although Johnson's eastern region of Tennessee was largely against secession, the second referendum passed, and in June 1861, Tennessee joined the Confederacy. Believing he would be killed if he stayed, Johnson fled through the Cumberland Gap, where his party was in fact shot at. He left his wife and family in Greeneville.[86][87]

As the only member from a seceded state to remain in the Senate and the most prominent Southern Unionist, Johnson had Lincoln's ear in the early months of the war.[88] With most of Tennessee in Confederate hands, Johnson spent congressional recesses in Kentucky and Ohio, trying in vain to convince any Union commander who would listen to conduct an operation into East Tennessee.[89]

Johnson's first tenure in the Senate came to a conclusion in March 1862 when Lincoln appointed him military governor of Tennessee. Much of the central and western portions of that seceded state had been recovered. Although some argued that civil government should simply resume once the Confederates were defeated in an area, Lincoln chose to use his power as commander in chief to appoint military governors over Union-controlled Southern regions.[90] The Senate quickly confirmed Johnson's nomination along with the rank of brigadier general.[91] In response, the Confederates confiscated his land and his slaves, and turned his home into a military hospital.[92] Later in 1862, after his departure from the Senate and in the absence of most Southern legislators, the Homestead Bill was finally enacted. Along with legislation for land-grant colleges and for the transcontinental railroad, the Homestead Bill has been credited with opening the American West to settlement.[93]

As military governor, Johnson sought to eliminate rebel influence in the state. He demanded loyalty oaths from public officials, and shut down all newspapers owned by Confederate sympathizers. Much of eastern Tennessee remained in Confederate hands, and the ebb and flow of war during 1862 sometimes brought Confederate control again close to Nashville. However, the Confederates allowed his wife and family to pass through the lines to join him.[94][95] Johnson undertook the defense of Nashville as well as he could, though the city was continually harassed by cavalry raids led by General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Relief from Union regulars did not come until William S. Rosecrans defeated the Confederates at Murfreesboro in early 1863. Much of eastern Tennessee was captured later that year.[96]

When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863, declaring freedom for all slaves in Confederate-held areas, he exempted Tennessee at Johnson's request. The proclamation increased the debate over what should become of the slaves after the war, as not all Unionists supported abolition. Johnson finally decided that slavery had to end. He wrote, "If the institution of slavery ... seeks to overthrow it [the Government], then the Government has a clear right to destroy it".[97] He reluctantly supported efforts to enlist former slaves into the Union Army, feeling that African Americans should perform menial tasks to release white Americans to do the fighting.[98] Nevertheless, he succeeded in recruiting 20,000 black soldiers to serve the Union.[99]

In 1860, Lincoln's running mate had been Maine Senator Hannibal Hamlin. Vice President Hamlin had served competently, was in good health, and was willing to run again. Nevertheless, Johnson emerged as running mate for Lincoln's re-election bid in 1864.[100]

Lincoln considered several War Democrats for the ticket in 1864, and sent an agent to sound out General Benjamin Butler as a possible running mate. In May 1864, the President dispatched General Daniel Sickles to Nashville on a fact-finding mission. Although Sickles denied he was there either to investigate or interview the military governor, Johnson biographer Hans L. Trefousse believes Sickles's trip was connected to Johnson's subsequent nomination for vice president.[100] According to historian Albert Castel in his account of Johnson's presidency, Lincoln was impressed by Johnson's administration of Tennessee.[94] Gordon-Reed points out that while the Lincoln-Hamlin ticket might have been considered geographically balanced in 1860, "having Johnson, the southern War Democrat, on the ticket sent the right message about the folly of secession and the continuing capacity for union within the country."[101] Another factor was the desire of Secretary of State William Seward to frustrate the vice-presidential candidacy of his fellow New Yorker, former senator Daniel S. Dickinson, a War Democrat, as Seward would probably have had to yield his place if another New Yorker became vice president. Johnson, once he was told by reporters the likely purpose of Sickles' visit, was active on his own behalf, giving speeches and having his political friends work behind the scenes to boost his candidacy.[102]

To sound a theme of unity, Lincoln in 1864 ran under the banner of the National Union Party, rather than the Republicans.[101] At the party's convention in Baltimore in June, Lincoln was easily nominated, although there had been some talk of replacing him with a Cabinet officer or one of the more successful generals. After the convention backed Lincoln, former Secretary of War Simon Cameron offered a resolution to nominate Hamlin, but it was defeated. Johnson was nominated for vice president by C.M. Allen of Indiana with an Iowa delegate as seconder. On the first ballot, Johnson led with 200 votes to 150 for Hamlin and 108 for Dickinson. On the second ballot, Kentucky switched to vote for Johnson, beginning a stampede. Johnson was named on the second ballot with 491 votes to Hamlin's 17 and eight for Dickinson; the nomination was made unanimous. Lincoln expressed pleasure at the result, "Andy Johnson, I think, is a good man."[103] When word reached Nashville, a crowd assembled and the military governor obliged with a speech contending his selection as a Southerner meant that the rebel states had not actually left the Union.[103]

Although it was unusual at the time for a national candidate to actively campaign, Johnson gave a number of speeches in Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana. He also sought to boost his chances in Tennessee while re-establishing civil government by making the loyalty oath even more restrictive, in that voters would now have to swear they opposed making a settlement with the Confederacy. The Democratic candidate for president, George McClellan, hoped to avoid additional bloodshed by negotiation, and so the stricter loyalty oath effectively disenfranchised his supporters. Lincoln declined to override Johnson, and their ticket took the state by 25,000 votes. Congress refused to count Tennessee's electoral votes, but Lincoln and Johnson did not need them, having won in most states that had voted, and easily secured the election.[104]

1865 cartoon showing Lincoln and Johnson using their talents as rail-splitter and tailor to repair the Union

Now Vice President-elect, Johnson was anxious to complete the work of re-establishing civilian government in Tennessee, although the timetable for the election of a new governor did not allow it to take place until after Inauguration Day, March 4. He hoped to remain in Nashville to complete his task, but was told by Lincoln's advisers that he could not stay, but would be sworn in with Lincoln. In these months, Union troops finished the retaking of eastern Tennessee, including Greeneville. Just before his departure, the voters of Tennessee ratified a new constitution, abolishing slavery, on February 22, 1865. One of Johnson's final acts as military governor was to certify the results.[105]

Johnson traveled to Washington to be sworn in, although according to Gordon-Reed, "in light of what happened on March 4, 1865, it might have been better if Johnson had stayed in Nashville."[106] He may have been ill; Castel cited typhoid fever,[94] though Gordon-Reed notes that there is no independent evidence for that diagnosis.[106] On the evening of March 3, Johnson attended a party in his honor; he drank heavily. Hung over the following morning at the Capitol, he asked Vice President Hamlin for some whiskey. Hamlin produced a bottle, and Johnson took two stiff drinks, stating "I need all the strength for the occasion I can have." In the Senate Chamber, Johnson delivered a rambling address as Lincoln, the Congress, and dignitaries looked on. Almost incoherent at times, he finally meandered to a halt, whereupon Hamlin hastily swore him in as vice president.[107] Lincoln, who had watched sadly during the debacle, was sworn in, and delivered his acclaimed Second Inaugural Address.[108]

In the weeks after the inauguration, Johnson only presided over the Senate briefly, and hid from public ridicule at the Maryland home of a friend, Francis Preston Blair. When he did return to Washington, it was with the intent of leaving for Tennessee to re-establish his family in Greeneville. Instead, he remained after word came that General Ulysses S. Grant had captured the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, presaging the end of the war.[109] Lincoln stated, in response to criticism of Johnson's behavior, that "I have known Andy Johnson for many years; he made a bad slip the other day, but you need not be scared; Andy ain't a drunkard."[110]

On the afternoon of April 14, 1865, Lincoln and Johnson met for the first time since the inauguration. Trefousse states that Johnson wanted to "induce Lincoln not to be too lenient with traitors"; Gordon-Reed agrees.[111][112]

Contemporary woodcut of Johnson being sworn in by Chief Justice Chase as Cabinet members look on, April 15, 1865

That night, President Lincoln was shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer. The shooting of the President was part of a conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln, Johnson, and Seward the same night. Seward barely survived his wounds, while Johnson escaped attack as his would-be assassin, George Atzerodt, got drunk instead of killing the vice president. Leonard J. Farwell, a fellow boarder at the Kirkwood House, awoke Johnson with news of Lincoln's shooting at Ford's Theatre. Johnson rushed to the President's deathbed, where he remained a short time, on his return promising, "They shall suffer for this. They shall suffer for this."[113] Lincoln died at 7:22 am the next morning; Johnson's swearing in occurred between 10 and 11 am with Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presiding in the presence of most of the Cabinet. Johnson's demeanor was described by the newspapers as "solemn and dignified".[114] Some Cabinet members had last seen Johnson, apparently drunk, at the inauguration.[115] At noon, Johnson conducted his first Cabinet meeting in the Treasury Secretary's office, and asked all members to remain in their positions.[116]

The events of the assassination resulted in speculation, then and subsequently, concerning Johnson and what the conspirators might have intended for him. In the vain hope of having his life spared after his capture, Atzerodt spoke much about the conspiracy, but did not say anything to indicate that the plotted assassination of Johnson was merely a ruse. Conspiracy theorists point to the fact that on the day of the assassination, Booth came to the Kirkwood House and left one of his cards. This object was received by Johnson's private secretary, William A. Browning, with an inscription, "Don't wish to disturb you. Are you at home? J. Wilkes Booth."[117]

Johnson presided with dignity over Lincoln's funeral ceremonies in Washington, before his predecessor's body was sent home to Springfield, Illinois, for burial.[118] Shortly after Lincoln's death, Union General William T. Sherman reported he had, without consulting Washington, reached an armistice agreement with Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston for the surrender of Confederate forces in North Carolina in exchange for the existing state government remaining in power, with private property rights to be respected. This did not even acknowledge the freedom of those in slavery. This was not acceptable to Johnson or the Cabinet who sent word for Sherman to secure the surrender without making political deals, which he did. Further, Johnson placed a $100,000 bounty (equivalent to $1.6 million in 2017) on Confederate President Davis, then a fugitive, which gave him the reputation of a man who would be tough on the South. More controversially, he permitted the execution of Mary Surratt for her part in Lincoln's assassination. Surratt was executed with three others, including Atzerodt, on July 7, 1865.[119]

Upon taking office, Johnson faced the question of what to do with the Confederacy. President Lincoln had authorized loyalist governments in Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee as the Union came to control large parts of those states and advocated a ten percent plan that would allow elections after ten percent of the voters in any state took an oath of future loyalty to the Union. Congress considered this too lenient; its own plan, requiring a majority of voters to take the loyalty oath, passed both houses in 1864, but Lincoln pocket vetoed it.[120]

Johnson had three goals in Reconstruction. He sought a speedy restoration of the states, on the grounds that they had never truly left the Union, and thus should again be recognized once loyal citizens formed a government. To Johnson, African-American suffrage was a delay and a distraction; it had always been a state responsibility to decide who should vote. Second, political power in the Southern states should pass from the planter class to his beloved "plebeians". Johnson feared that the freedmen, many of whom were still economically bound to their former masters, might vote at their direction. Johnson's third priority was election in his own right in 1868, a feat no one who had succeeded a deceased president had managed to accomplish, attempting to secure a Democratic anti Congressional Reconstruction coalition in the South.[121]

The Republicans had formed a number of factions. The Radical Republicans sought voting and other civil rights for African Americans. They believed that the freedmen could be induced to vote Republican in gratitude for emancipation, and that black votes could keep the Republicans in power and Southern Democrats, including former rebels, out of influence. They believed that top Confederates should be punished. The Moderate Republicans sought to keep the Democrats out of power at a national level, and prevent former rebels from resuming power. They were not as enthusiastic about the idea of African-American suffrage as their Radical colleagues, either because of their own local political concerns, or because they believed that the freedman would be likely to cast his vote badly. Northern Democrats favored the unconditional restoration of the Southern states. They did not support African-American suffrage, which might threaten Democratic control in the South.[122]

Johnson was initially left to devise a Reconstruction policy without legislative intervention, as Congress was not due to meet again until December 1865.[123] Radical Republicans told the President that the Southern states were economically in a state of chaos and urged him to use his leverage to insist on rights for freedmen as a condition of restoration to the Union. But Johnson, with the support of other officials including Seward, insisted that the franchise was a state, not a federal matter. The Cabinet was divided on the issue.[124]

Johnson's first Reconstruction actions were two proclamations, with the unanimous backing of his Cabinet, on May 29. One recognized the Virginia government led by provisional Governor Francis Pierpont. The second provided amnesty for all ex-rebels except those holding property valued at $20,000 or more; it also appointed a temporary governor for North Carolina and authorized elections. Neither of these proclamations included provisions regarding black suffrage or freedmen's rights. The President ordered constitutional conventions in other former rebel states.[125]

As Southern states began the process of forming governments, Johnson's policies received considerable public support in the North, which he took as unconditional backing for quick reinstatement of the South. While he received such support from the white South, he underestimated the determination of Northerners to ensure that the war had not been fought for nothing. It was important, in Northern public opinion, that the South acknowledge its defeat, that slavery be ended, and that the lot of African Americans be improved. Voting rights were less important—after all, only a handful of Northern states (mostly in New England) gave African-American men the right to vote on the same basis as whites, and in late 1865, Connecticut, Wisconsin, and Minnesota voted down African-American suffrage proposals by large margins. Northern public opinion tolerated Johnson's inaction on black suffrage as an experiment, to be allowed if it quickened Southern acceptance of defeat. Instead, white Southerners felt emboldened. A number of Southern states passed Black Codes, binding African-American laborers to farms on annual contracts they could not quit, and allowing law enforcement at whim to arrest them for vagrancy and rent out their labor. Most Southerners elected to Congress were former Confederates, with the most prominent being Georgia Senator-designate and former Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens. Congress assembled in early December 1865; Johnson's conciliatory annual message to them was well received. Nevertheless, Congress refused to seat the Southern legislators and established a committee to recommend appropriate Reconstruction legislation.[126]

Northerners were outraged at the idea of unrepentant Confederate leaders, such as Stephens, rejoining the federal government at a time when emotional wounds from the war remained raw. They saw the Black Codes placing African Americans in a position barely above slavery. Republicans also feared that restoration of the Southern states would return the Democrats to power.[127][128] In addition, according to David O. Stewart in his book on Johnson's impeachment, "the violence and poverty that oppressed the South would galvanize the opposition to Johnson".[129]

Congress was reluctant to confront the President, and initially only sought to fine-tune Johnson's policies towards the South.[130] According to Trefousse, "If there was a time when Johnson could have come to an agreement with the moderates of the Republican Party, it was the period following the return of Congress".[131] The President was unhappy about the provocative actions of the Southern states, and about the continued control by the antebellum elite there, but made no statement publicly, believing that Southerners had a right to act as they did, even if it was unwise to do so. By late January 1866, he was convinced that winning a showdown with the Radical Republicans was necessary to his political plans – both for the success of Reconstruction and for re-election in 1868. He would have preferred that the conflict arise over the legislative efforts to enfranchise African Americans in the District of Columbia, a proposal that had been defeated overwhelmingly in an all-white referendum. A bill to accomplish this passed the House of Representatives, but to Johnson's disappointment, stalled in the Senate before he could veto it.[132]

Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull, leader of the Moderate Republicans and Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was anxious to reach an understanding with the President. He ushered through Congress a bill extending the Freedmen's Bureau beyond its scheduled abolition in 1867, and the first Civil Rights Bill, to grant citizenship to the freedmen. Trumbull met several times with Johnson, and was convinced the President would sign the measures (Johnson rarely contradicted visitors, often fooling those who met with him into thinking he was in accord). In fact, the President opposed both bills as infringements on state sovereignty. Additionally, both of Trumbull's bills were unpopular among white Southerners, whom Johnson hoped to include in his new party. Johnson vetoed the Freedman's Bureau bill on February 18, 1866, to the delight of white Southerners and the puzzled anger of Republican legislators. He considered himself vindicated when a move to override his veto failed in the Senate the following day.[132] Johnson believed that the Radicals would now be isolated and defeated, and that the Moderate Republicans would form behind him; he did not understand that Moderates too wanted to see African Americans treated fairly.[133]

On February 22, 1866, Washington's Birthday, Johnson gave an impromptu speech to supporters who had marched to the White House and called for an address in honor of the first president. In his hour-long speech, he instead referred to himself over 200 times. More damagingly, he also spoke of "men ... still opposed to the Union" to whom he could not extend the hand of friendship he gave to the South.[134][135] When called upon by the crowd to say who they were, Johnson named Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, and abolitionist Wendell Phillips, and accused them of plotting his assassination. Republicans viewed the address as a declaration of war, while one Democratic ally estimated Johnson's speech cost the party 200,000 votes in the 1866 congressional midterm elections.[136]

Although strongly urged by Moderates to sign the Civil Rights Bill, Johnson broke decisively with them by vetoing it on March 27. In his veto message, he objected to the measure because it conferred citizenship on the freedmen at a time when 11 out of 36 states were unrepresented in the Congress, and that it discriminated in favor of African Americans and against whites.[137][138] Within three weeks, Congress had overridden his veto, the first time that had been done on a major bill in American history.[139] The veto of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, often seen as a key mistake of Johnson's presidency, convinced Moderates there was no hope of working with him. Historian Eric Foner in his volume on Reconstruction views it as "the most disastrous miscalculation of his political career". According to Stewart, the veto was "for many his defining blunder, setting a tone of perpetual confrontation with Congress that prevailed for the rest of his presidency".[140]

Congress also proposed the Fourteenth Amendment to the states. Written by Trumbull and others, it was sent for ratification by state legislatures in a process in which the president plays no part, though Johnson opposed it. The amendment was designed to put the key provisions of the Civil Rights Act into the Constitution, but also went further. The amendment extended citizenship to every person born in the United States (except Indians on reservations), penalized states that did not give the vote to freedmen, and most importantly, created new federal civil rights that could be protected by federal courts. It also guaranteed that the federal debt would be paid and forbade repayment of Confederate war debts. Further, it disqualified many former Confederates from office, although the disability could be removed—by Congress, not the president.[141] Both houses passed the Freedmen's Bureau Act a second time, and again the President vetoed it; this time, the veto was overridden. By the summer of 1866, when Congress finally adjourned, Johnson's method of restoring states to the Union by executive fiat, without safeguards for the freedmen, was in deep trouble. His home state of Tennessee ratified the Fourteenth Amendment despite the President's opposition.[142] When Tennessee did so, Congress immediately seated its proposed delegation, embarrassing Johnson.[143]

Efforts to compromise failed,[144] and a political war ensued between the united Republicans on one side, and on the other, Johnson and his allies in the Democratic Party, North and South. He called a convention of the National Union Party. Republicans had returned to using their previous identifier; Johnson intended to use the discarded name to unite his supporters and gain election to a full-term, in 1868.[145] The battleground was the election of 1866; Southern states were not allowed to vote. Johnson campaigned vigorously, undertaking a public speaking tour, known as the "Swing Around the Circle". The trip, including speeches in Chicago, St. Louis, Indianapolis and Columbus, proved politically disastrous, with the President making controversial comparisons between himself and Christ, and engaging in arguments with hecklers. These exchanges were attacked as beneath the dignity of the presidency. The Republicans won by a landslide, increasing their two-thirds majority in Congress, and made plans to control Reconstruction.[146] Johnson blamed the Democrats for giving only lukewarm support to the National Union movement.[147]

Even with the Republican victory in November 1866, Johnson considered himself in a strong position. The Fourteenth Amendment had been ratified by none of the Southern or border states except Tennessee, and had been rejected in Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland. As the amendment required ratification by three-quarters of the states to become part of the Constitution, he believed the deadlock would be broken in his favor, leading to his election in 1868. Once it reconvened in December 1866, an energized Congress began passing legislation, often over a presidential veto; this included the District of Columbia voting bill. Congress admitted Nebraska to the Union over a veto, and the Republicans gained two senators and a state that promptly ratified the amendment. Johnson's veto of a bill for statehood for Colorado Territory was sustained; enough senators agreed that a district with a population of 30,000 was not yet worthy of statehood to win the day.[148]

In January 1867, Congressman Stevens introduced legislation to dissolve the Southern state governments and reconstitute them into five military districts, under martial law. The states would begin again by holding constitutional conventions. African Americans could vote for or become delegates; former Confederates could not. In the legislative process, Congress added to the bill that restoration to the Union would follow the state's ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, and completion of the process of adding it to the Constitution. Johnson and the Southerners attempted a compromise, whereby the South would agree to a modified version of the amendment without the disqualification of former Confederates, and for limited black suffrage. The Republicans insisted on the full language of the amendment, and the deal fell through. Although Johnson could have pocket vetoed the First Reconstruction Act as it was presented to him less than ten days before the end of the Thirty-Ninth Congress, he chose to veto it directly on March 2, 1867; Congress overruled him the same day. Also on March 2, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act over the President's veto, in response to statements during the Swing Around the Circle that he planned to fire Cabinet secretaries who did not agree with him. This bill, requiring Senate approval for the firing of Cabinet members during the tenure of the president who appointed them and for one month afterwards, was immediately controversial, with some senators doubting that it was constitutional or that its terms applied to Johnson, whose key Cabinet officers were Lincoln holdovers.[148]

"The Situation", a Harper's Weekly editorial cartoon shows Secretary of War Stanton aiming a cannon labeled "Congress" to defeat Johnson. The rammer is "Tenure of Office Bill" and cannonballs on the floor are "Justice".

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton was an able and hard-working man, but difficult to deal with.[149] Johnson both admired and was exasperated by his War Secretary, who, in combination with General of the Army Grant, worked to undermine the president's Southern policy from within his own administration. Johnson considered firing Stanton, but respected him for his wartime service as secretary. Stanton, for his part, feared allowing Johnson to appoint his successor and refused to resign, despite his public disagreements with his president.[150]

The new Congress met for a few weeks in March 1867, then adjourned, leaving the House Committee on the Judiciary behind, charged with reporting back to the full House whether there were grounds for Johnson to be impeached. This committee duly met, examined the President's bank accounts, and summoned members of the Cabinet to testify.

When a federal court released former Confederate president Davis on bail on May 13 (he had been captured shortly after the war), the committee investigated whether the President had impeded the prosecution. It learned that Johnson was eager to have Davis tried. A bipartisan majority of the committee voted down impeachment charges; the committee adjourned on June 3.[151]

Later in June, Johnson and Stanton battled over the question of whether the military officers placed in command of the South could override the civil authorities. The President had Attorney General Henry Stanbery issue an opinion backing his position that they could not. Johnson sought to pin down Stanton either as for, and thus endorsing Johnson's position, or against, showing himself to be opposed to his president and the rest of the Cabinet. Stanton evaded the point in meetings and written communications.

When Congress reconvened in July, it passed a Reconstruction Act against Johnson's position, waited for his veto, overruled it, and went home. In addition to clarifying the powers of the generals, the legislation also deprived the President of control over the Army in the South. With Congress in recess until November, Johnson decided to fire Stanton and relieve one of the military commanders, General Philip Sheridan, who had dismissed the governor of Texas and installed a replacement with little popular support.

Johnson was initially deterred by a strong objection from Grant, but on August 5, the President demanded Stanton's resignation; the secretary refused to quit with Congress out of session.[152] Johnson then suspended him pending the next meeting of Congress as permitted under the Tenure of Office Act; Grant agreed to serve as temporary replacement while continuing to lead the Army.[153]

Grant, under protest, followed Johnson's order transferring Sheridan and another of the district commanders, Daniel Sickles, who had angered Johnson by firmly following Congress's plan. The President also issued a proclamation pardoning most Confederates, exempting those who held office under the Confederacy, or who had served in federal office before the war and had breached their oaths.

Although Republicans expressed anger with his actions, the 1867 elections generally went Democratic. No seats in Congress were directly elected in the polling, but the Democrats took control of the Ohio General Assembly, allowing them to defeat for re-election one of Johnson's strongest opponents, Senator Benjamin Wade. Voters in Ohio, Connecticut, and Minnesota turned down propositions to grant African Americans the vote.[154]

The adverse results momentarily put a stop to Republican calls to impeach Johnson, who was elated by the elections.[155] Nevertheless, once Congress met in November, the Judiciary Committee reversed itself and passed a resolution of impeachment against Johnson. After much debate about whether anything the President had done was a high crime or misdemeanor, the standard under the Constitution, the resolution was defeated by the House of Representatives on December 7, 1867, by a vote of 57 in favor to 108 opposed.[156]

Johnson notified Congress of Stanton's suspension and Grant's interim appointment. In January 1868, the Senate disapproved of his action, and reinstated Stanton, contending the President had violated the Tenure of Office Act. Grant stepped aside over Johnson's objection, causing a complete break between them. Johnson then dismissed Stanton and appointed Lorenzo Thomas to replace him.

Stanton refused to leave his office, and on February 24, 1868, the House impeached the President for intentionally violating the Tenure of Office Act, by a vote of 128 to 47. The House subsequently adopted eleven articles of impeachment, for the most part alleging that he had violated the Tenure of Office Act, and had questioned the legitimacy of Congress.[157]

On March 5, 1868, the impeachment trial began in the Senate and lasted almost three months; Congressmen George S. Boutwell, Benjamin Butler and Thaddeus Stevens acted as managers for the House, or prosecutors, and William M. Evarts, Benjamin R. Curtis and former Attorney General Stanbery were Johnson's counsel; Chief Justice Chase served as presiding judge.[158]

The defense relied on the provision of the Tenure of Office Act that made it applicable only to appointees of the current administration. Since Lincoln had appointed Stanton, the defense maintained Johnson had not violated the act, and also argued that the President had the right to test the constitutionality of an act of Congress.[159] Johnson's counsel insisted that he make no appearance at the trial, nor publicly comment about the proceedings, and except for a pair of interviews in April, he complied.[160]

Johnson maneuvered to gain an acquittal; for example, he pledged to Iowa Senator James W. Grimes that he would not interfere with Congress's Reconstruction efforts. Grimes reported to a group of Moderates, many of whom voted for acquittal, that he believed the President would keep his word. Johnson also promised to install the respected John Schofield as War Secretary. [161] Kansas Senator Edmund G. Ross received assurances that the new, Radical-influenced constitutions ratified in South Carolina and Arkansas would be transmitted to the Congress without delay, an action which would give him and other senators political cover to vote for acquittal.[162]

One reason senators were reluctant to remove the President was that his successor would have been Ohio Senator Wade, the president pro tempore of the Senate. Wade, a lame duck who left office in early 1869, was a Radical who supported such measures as women's suffrage, placing him beyond the pale politically in much of the nation.[163][164] Additionally, a President Wade was seen as an obstacle to Grant's ambitions.[165]

With the dealmaking, Johnson was confident of the result in advance of the verdict, and in the days leading up to the ballot, newspapers reported that Stevens and his Radicals had given up. On May 16, the Senate voted on the 11th article of impeachment, accusing Johnson of firing Stanton in violation of the Tenure of Office of Act once the Senate had overturned his suspension. Thirty-five senators voted "guilty" and 19 "not guilty", thus falling short by a single vote of the two-thirds majority required for conviction under the Constitution.

The Senate returned on May 26 and voted on the second and third articles, with identical 35–19 results. Faced with those results, Johnson's opponents gave up and dismissed proceedings.[166][167] Stanton "relinquished" his office on May 26, and the Senate subsequently confirmed Schofield.[168] When Johnson renominated Stanbery to return to his position as Attorney General after his service as a defense manager, the Senate refused to confirm him.[169]

Allegations were made at the time and again later that bribery dictated the outcome of the trial. Even when it was in progress, Representative Butler began an investigation, held contentious hearings, and issued a report, unendorsed by any other congressman. Butler focused on a New York–based "Astor House Group", supposedly led by political boss and editor Thurlow Weed. This organization was said to have raised large sums of money from whiskey interests through Cincinnati lawyer Charles Woolley to bribe senators to acquit Johnson. Butler went so far as to imprison Woolley in the Capitol building when he refused to answer questions, but failed to prove bribery.[170]

Soon after taking office as president, Johnson reached an accord with Secretary of State William H. Seward that there would be no change in foreign policy. In practice, this meant that Seward would continue to run things as he had under Lincoln. Seward and Lincoln had been rivals for the nomination in 1860; the victor hoped that Seward would succeed him as president in 1869. At the time of Johnson's accession, the French had intervened in Mexico, sending troops there. While many politicians had indulged in saber rattling over the Mexican matter, Seward preferred quiet diplomacy, warning the French through diplomatic channels that their presence in Mexico was not acceptable. Although the President preferred a more aggressive approach, Seward persuaded him to follow his lead. In April 1866, the French government informed Seward that its troops would be brought home in stages, to conclude by November 1867.[171]

Seward was an expansionist, and sought opportunities to gain territory for the United States. By 1867, the Russian government saw its North American colony (today Alaska) as a financial liability, and feared losing control as American settlement reached there. It instructed its minister in Washington, Baron Eduard de Stoeckl, to negotiate a sale. De Stoeckl did so deftly, getting Seward to raise his offer from $5 million (coincidentally, the minimum that Russia had instructed de Stoeckl to accept) to $7 million, and then getting $200,000 added by raising various objections.[172] This sum of $7.2 million is equivalent to $126 million in present-day terms.[173] On March 30, 1867, de Stoeckl and Seward signed the treaty, working quickly as the Senate was about to adjourn. Johnson and Seward took the signed document to the President's Room in the Capitol, only to be told there was no time to deal with the matter before adjournment. The President summoned the Senate into session to meet on April 1; that body approved the treaty, 37–2.[174] Emboldened by his success in Alaska, Seward sought acquisitions elsewhere. His only success was staking an American claim to uninhabited Wake Island in the Pacific, which would be officially claimed by the U.S. in 1898. He came close with the Danish West Indies as Denmark agreed to sell and the local population approved the transfer in a plebiscite, but the Senate never voted on the treaty and it expired.[175]

Another treaty that fared badly was the Johnson-Clarendon convention, negotiated in settlement of the Alabama Claims, for damages to American shipping from British-built Confederate raiders. Negotiated by the United States Minister to Britain, former Maryland senator Reverdy Johnson, in late 1868, it was ignored by the Senate during the remainder of the President's term. The treaty was rejected after he left office, and the Grant administration later negotiated considerably better terms from Britain.[176][177]

Johnson appointed nine Article III federal judges during his presidency, all to United States district courts; he did not appoint a justice to serve on the Supreme Court. In April 1866, he nominated Henry Stanbery to fill the vacancy left with the death of John Catron, but Congress eliminated the seat to prevent the appointment, and to ensure that he did not get to make any appointments eliminated the next vacancy as well, providing that the court would shrink by one justice when one next departed from office.[178] Johnson appointed his Greeneville crony, Samuel Milligan, to the United States Court of Claims, where he served from 1868 until his death in 1874.[179][180]

In June 1866, Johnson signed the Southern Homestead Act into law, believing that the legislation would assist poor whites. Around 28,000 land claims were successfully patented, although few former slaves benefitted from the law, fraud was rampant, and much of the best land was off-limits; reserved for grants to veterans or railroads.[181] In June 1868, Johnson signed an eight-hour law passed by Congress that established an eight-hour workday for laborers and mechanics employed by the Federal Government.[182] Although Johnson told members of a Workingmen's party delegation in Baltimore that he could not directly commit himself to an eight-hour day, he nevertheless told the same delegation that he greatly favoured the "shortest number of hours consistent with the interests of all."[183] According to Richard F. Selcer, however, the good intentions behind the law were "immediately frustrated" as wages were cut by 20%.[182]

Johnson sought nomination by the 1868 Democratic National Convention in New York in July 1868. He remained very popular among Southern whites, and boosted that popularity by issuing, just before the convention, a pardon ending the possibility of criminal proceedings against any Confederate not already indicted, meaning that only Davis and a few others still might face trial. On the first ballot, Johnson was second to former Ohio representative George H. Pendleton, who had been his Democratic opponent for vice president in 1864. Johnson's support was mostly from the South, and fell away as the ballots passed. On the 22nd ballot, former New York governor Horatio Seymour was nominated, and the President received only four votes, all from Tennessee.[184]

The conflict with Congress continued. Johnson sent Congress proposals for amendments to limit the president to a single six-year term and make the president and the Senate directly elected, and for term limits for judges. Congress took no action on them. When the President was slow to officially report ratifications of the Fourteenth Amendment by the new Southern legislatures, Congress passed a bill, again over his veto, requiring him to do so within ten days of receipt. He still delayed as much as he could, but was required, in July 1868, to report the ratifications making the amendment part of the Constitution.[185]

Seymour's operatives sought Johnson's support, but he long remained silent on the presidential campaign. It was not until October, with the vote already having taken place in some states, that he mentioned Seymour at all, and he never endorsed him. Nevertheless, Johnson regretted Grant's victory, in part because of their animus from the Stanton affair. In his annual message to Congress in December, Johnson urged the repeal of the Tenure of Office Act and told legislators that had they admitted their Southern colleagues in 1865, all would have been well. He celebrated his 60th birthday in late December with a party for several hundred children, though not including those of President-elect Grant, who did not allow his to go.[186]

On Christmas Day 1868, Johnson issued a final amnesty, this one covering everyone, including Davis. He also issued, in his final months in office, pardons for crimes, including one for Dr. Samuel Mudd, controversially convicted of involvement in the Lincoln assassination (he had set Booth's broken leg) and imprisoned in Fort Jefferson on Florida's Dry Tortugas.[186]

On March 3, the President hosted a large public reception at the White House on his final full day in office. Grant had made it known that he was unwilling to ride in the same carriage as Johnson, as was customary, and Johnson refused to go to the inauguration at all. Despite an effort by Seward to prompt a change of mind, he spent the morning of March 4 finishing last-minute business, and then shortly after noon rode from the White House to the home of a friend.[187][188]

After leaving the presidency, Johnson remained for some weeks in Washington, then returned to Greeneville for the first time in eight years. He was honored with large public celebrations along the way, especially in Tennessee, where cities hostile to him during the war hung out welcome banners. He had arranged to purchase a large farm near Greeneville to live on after his presidency.[189]

Some expected Johnson to seek to be Tennessee's governor again or to attempt a return to the Senate, others that he would become a railroad executive.[177] Johnson found Greeneville boring, and his private life was embittered by the suicide of his son Robert in 1869.[190] Seeking vindication for himself, and revenge against his political enemies, he launched a Senate bid soon after returning home. Tennessee had gone Republican, but court rulings restoring the vote to some whites and the violence of the Ku Klux Klan kept down the African-American vote, leading to a Democratic victory in the legislative elections in August 1869. Johnson was seen as a likely victor in the Senate election, although hated by Radical Republicans, and also by some Democrats because of his wartime activities. Although he was at one point within a single vote of victory in the legislature's balloting, the Republicans eventually elected Henry Cooper over Johnson, 54–51.[191] In 1872, there was a special election for an at-large congressional seat for Tennessee; Johnson initially sought the Democratic nomination, but when he saw that it would go to former Confederate general Benjamin F. Cheatham, decided to run as an independent. The former president was defeated, finishing third, but the split in the Democratic Party defeated Cheatham in favor of an old Johnson Unionist ally, Horace Maynard.[192]

In 1873, Johnson contracted cholera during an epidemic but recovered; that year he lost about $73,000, when the First National Bank of Washington went under, though he was eventually repaid much of the sum.[193] He began looking towards the next Senate election, to take place in the legislature in early 1875. Johnson began to woo the farmers' Grange movement; with his Jeffersonian leanings, he easily gained their support. He spoke throughout the state in his final campaign tour. Few African Americans outside the large towns were now able to vote as Reconstruction faded in Tennessee, setting a pattern that would be repeated in the other Southern states; the white domination would last almost a century. In the Tennessee legislative elections in August, the Democrats elected 92 legislators to the Republicans' eight, and Johnson went to Nashville for the legislative session. When the balloting for the Senate seat began on January 20, 1875, he led with 30 votes, but did not have the required majority as three former Confederate generals, one former colonel, and a former Democratic congressman split the vote with him. Johnson's opponents tried to agree on a single candidate who might gain majority support and defeat him, but failed, and he was elected on January 26 on the 54th ballot, with a margin of a single vote. Nashville erupted in rejoicing;[194][195] remarked Johnson, "Thank God for the vindication."[190]

Johnson's comeback garnered national attention, with the St. Louis Republican calling it, "the most magnificent personal triumph which the history of American politics can show".[195] At his swearing-in in the Senate on March 5, 1875, he was greeted with flowers and sworn in with his predecessor as vice president, Hamlin, by that office's current incumbent, Henry Wilson, who as senator had voted for his ousting. Many Republicans ignored Senator Johnson, though some, such as Ohio's John Sherman (who had voted for conviction), shook his hand. Johnson remains the only former president to serve in the Senate. He spoke only once in the short session, on March 22 lambasting President Grant for his use of federal troops in support of Louisiana's Reconstruction government. The former president asked, "How far off is military despotism?" and concluded his speech, "may God bless this people and God save the Constitution."[196]

Johnson returned home after the special session concluded. In late July, convinced some of his opponents were defaming him in the Ohio gubernatorial race, he decided to travel there to give speeches. He began the trip on July 28, and broke the journey at his daughter Mary's farm near Elizabethton, where his daughter Martha was also staying. That evening he suffered a stroke, but refused medical treatment until the next day, when he did not improve and two doctors were sent for from Elizabethton. He seemed to respond to their ministrations, but suffered another stroke on the evening of July 30, and died early the following morning at the age of 66. President Grant had the "painful duty" of announcing the death of the only surviving past president. Northern newspapers, in their obituaries, tended to focus on Johnson's loyalty during the war, while Southern ones paid tribute to his actions as president. Johnson's funeral was held on August 3 in Greeneville.[197][198] He was buried with his body wrapped in an American flag and a copy of the U.S. Constitution placed under his head, according to his wishes. The burial ground was dedicated as the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery in 1906, and with his home and tailor's shop, is part of the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site.[199]

According to Castel, "historians [of Johnson's presidency] have tended to concentrate to the exclusion of practically everything else upon his role in that titanic event [Reconstruction]".[200] Through the remainder of the 19th century, there were few historical evaluations of Johnson and his presidency. Memoirs from Northerners who had dealt with him, such as former vice president Henry Wilson and Maine Senator James G. Blaine, depicted him as an obstinate boor who tried to favor the South in Reconstruction, but who was frustrated by Congress.[201] According to historian Howard K. Beale in his journal article about the historiography of Reconstruction, "Men of the postwar decades were more concerned with justifying their own position than they were with painstaking search for truth. Thus [Alabama congressman and historian] Hilary Herbert and his corroborators presented a Southern indictment of Northern policies, and Henry Wilson's history was a brief for the North."[202]

The turn of the 20th century saw the first significant historical evaluations of Johnson. Leading the wave was Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James Ford Rhodes, who wrote of the former president:[201]

Johnson acted in accordance with his nature. He had intellectual force but it worked in a groove. Obstinate rather than firm it undoubtedly seemed to him that following counsel and making concessions were a display of weakness. At all events from his December message to the veto of the Civil Rights Bill he yielded not a jot to Congress. The moderate senators and representatives (who constituted a majority of the Union party) asked him for only a slight compromise; their action was really an entreaty that he would unite with them to preserve Congress and the country from the policy of the radicals ... His quarrel with Congress prevented the readmission into the Union on generous terms of the members of the late Confederacy ... His pride of opinion, his desire to beat, blinded him to the real welfare of the South and of the whole country.[203]

Rhodes ascribed Johnson's faults to his personal weaknesses, and blamed him for the problems of the postbellum South.[202] Other early 20th-century historians, such as John Burgess, Woodrow Wilson (who later became president himself) and William Dunning, all Southerners, concurred with Rhodes, believing Johnson flawed and politically inept, but concluding that he had tried to carry out Lincoln's plans for the South in good faith.[204] Author and journalist Jay Tolson suggests that Wilson "depict[ed Reconstruction] as a vindictive program that hurt even repentant southerners while benefiting northern opportunists, the so-called Carpetbaggers, and cynical white southerners, or Scalawags, who exploited alliances with blacks for political gain".[205]

The grave of Andrew Johnson, Greeneville, Tennessee

Even as Rhodes and his school wrote, another group of historians was setting out on the full rehabilitation of Johnson, using for the first time primary sources such as his papers, provided by his daughter Martha before her death in 1901, and the diaries of Johnson's Navy Secretary, Gideon Welles, first published in 1911. The resulting volumes, such as David Miller DeWitt's The Impeachment and Trial of President Andrew Johnson (1903), presented him far more favorably than they did those who had sought to oust him. In James Schouler's 1913 History of the Reconstruction Period, the author accused Rhodes of being "quite unfair to Johnson", though agreeing that the former president had created many of his own problems through inept political moves. These works had an effect; although historians continued to view Johnson as having deep flaws which sabotaged his presidency, they saw his Reconstruction policies as fundamentally correct.[206]

Castel writes:

at the end of the 1920s, an historiographical revolution took place. In the span of three years five widely read books appeared, all highly pro-Johnson....They differed in general approach and specific interpretations, but they all glorified Johnson and condemned his enemies. According to these writers, Johnson was a humane, enlightened, and liberal statesman who waged a courageous battle for the Constitution and democracy against scheming and unscrupulous Radicals, who were motivated by a vindictive hatred of the South, partisanship, and a desire to establish the supremacy of Northern “big business.” In short, rather than a boor, Johnson was a martyr; instead of a villain, a hero.[207]

Beale wondered in 1940, "is it not time that we studied the history of Reconstruction without first assuming, at least subconsciously, that carpetbaggers and Southern white Republicans were wicked, that Negroes were illiterate incompetents, and that the whole white South owes a debt of gratitude to the restorers of 'white supremacy'?"[208] Despite these doubts, the favorable view of Johnson survived for a time. In 1942, Van Heflin portrayed the former president as a fighter for democracy in the Hollywood film Tennessee Johnson. In 1948, a poll of his colleagues by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger deemed Johnson among the average presidents; in 1956, one by Clinton L. Rossiter named him as one of the near-great Chief Executives.[209] Foner notes that at the time of these surveys, "the Reconstruction era that followed the Civil War was regarded as a time of corruption and misgovernment caused by granting black men the right to vote".[210]

Earlier historians, including Beale, believed that money drove events, and had seen Reconstruction as an economic struggle. They also accepted, for the most part, that reconciliation between North and South should have been the top priority of Reconstruction. In the 1950s, historians began to focus on the African-American experience as central to Reconstruction. They rejected completely any claim of black inferiority, which had marked many earlier historical works, and saw the developing Civil Rights Movement as a second Reconstruction; some writers stated they hoped their work on the postbellum era would advance the cause of civil rights. These authors sympathized with the Radical Republicans for their desire to help the African American, and saw Johnson as callous towards the freedman. In a number of works from 1956 onwards by such historians as Fawn Brodie, the former president was depicted as a successful saboteur of efforts to better the freedman's lot. These volumes included major biographies of Stevens and Stanton.[211] Reconstruction was increasingly seen as a noble effort to integrate the freed slaves into society.[205][210]

In the early 21st century, Johnson is among those commonly mentioned as the worst presidents in U.S. history.[205] According to historian Glenn W. Lafantasie, who believes Buchanan the worst president, "Johnson is a particular favorite for the bottom of the pile because of his impeachment ... his complete mishandling of Reconstruction policy ... his bristling personality, and his enormous sense of self-importance."[212] Tolson suggests that "Johnson is now scorned for having resisted Radical Republican policies aimed at securing the rights and well-being of the newly emancipated African-Americans".[205] Gordon-Reed notes that Johnson, along with his contemporaries Pierce and Buchanan, are generally listed among the five worst presidents, but states, "there have never been more difficult times in the life of this nation. The problems these men had to confront were enormous. It would have taken a succession of Lincolns to do them justice."[213]

Trefousse considers Johnson's legacy to be "the maintenance of white supremacy. His boost to Southern conservatives by undermining Reconstruction was his legacy to the nation, one that would trouble the country for generations to come."[214] Gordon-Reed states of Johnson:

We know the results of Johnson's failures—that his preternatural stubbornness, his mean and crude racism, his primitive and instrumental understanding of the Constitution stunted his capacity for enlightened and forward-thinking leadership when those qualities were so desperately needed. At the same time, Johnson's story has a miraculous quality to it: the poor boy who systematically rose to the heights, fell from grace, and then fought his way back to a position of honor in the country. For good or ill, 'only in America,' as they say, could Johnson's story unfold in the way that it did.[215]

^Johnson was Vice President under President Abraham Lincoln and became President on Lincoln's death on April 15, 1865. Prior to the adoption of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment in 1967, a vacancy in the office of Vice President was not filled.

1.
President of the United States
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The President of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president directs the executive branch of the government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces. The president is considered to be one of the worlds most powerful political figures, the role includes being the commander-in-chief of the worlds most expensive military with the second largest nuclear arsenal and leading the nation with the largest economy by nominal GDP. The office of President holds significant hard and soft power both in the United States and abroad, Constitution vests the executive power of the United States in the president. The president is empowered to grant federal pardons and reprieves. The president is responsible for dictating the legislative agenda of the party to which the president is a member. The president also directs the foreign and domestic policy of the United States, since the office of President was established in 1789, its power has grown substantially, as has the power of the federal government as a whole. However, nine vice presidents have assumed the presidency without having elected to the office. The Twenty-second Amendment prohibits anyone from being elected president for a third term, in all,44 individuals have served 45 presidencies spanning 57 full four-year terms. On January 20,2017, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th, in 1776, the Thirteen Colonies, acting through the Second Continental Congress, declared political independence from Great Britain during the American Revolution. The new states, though independent of each other as nation states, desiring to avoid anything that remotely resembled a monarchy, Congress negotiated the Articles of Confederation to establish a weak alliance between the states. Out from under any monarchy, the states assigned some formerly royal prerogatives to Congress, only after all the states agreed to a resolution settling competing western land claims did the Articles take effect on March 1,1781, when Maryland became the final state to ratify them. In 1783, the Treaty of Paris secured independence for each of the former colonies, with peace at hand, the states each turned toward their own internal affairs. Prospects for the convention appeared bleak until James Madison and Edmund Randolph succeeded in securing George Washingtons attendance to Philadelphia as a delegate for Virginia. It was through the negotiations at Philadelphia that the presidency framed in the U. S. The first power the Constitution confers upon the president is the veto, the Presentment Clause requires any bill passed by Congress to be presented to the president before it can become law. Once the legislation has been presented, the president has three options, Sign the legislation, the bill becomes law. Veto the legislation and return it to Congress, expressing any objections, in this instance, the president neither signs nor vetoes the legislation

2.
Vice President of the United States
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The executive power of both the vice president and the president is granted under Article Two, Section One of the Constitution. The vice president is elected, together with the president. The Office of the Vice President of the United States assists, as the president of the United States Senate, the vice president votes only when it is necessary to break a tie. Additionally, pursuant to the Twelfth Amendment, the president presides over the joint session of Congress when it convenes to count the vote of the Electoral College. Currently, the president is usually seen as an integral part of a presidents administration. The Constitution does not expressly assign the office to any one branch, causing a dispute among scholars whether it belongs to the executive branch, the legislative branch, or both. The modern view of the president as a member of the executive branch is due in part to the assignment of executive duties to the vice president by either the president or Congress. Mike Pence of Indiana is the 48th and current vice president and he assumed office on January 20,2017. The formation of the office of vice president resulted directly from the compromise reached at the Philadelphia Convention which created the Electoral College, the delegates at Philadelphia agreed that each state would receive a number of presidential electors equal to the sum of that states allocation of Representatives and Senators. The delegates assumed that electors would typically choose to favor any candidate from their state over candidates from other states, under a plurality election process, this would tend to result in electing candidates solely from the largest states. Consequently, the delegates agreed that presidents must be elected by a majority of the number of electors. To guard against such stratagems, the Philadelphia delegates specified that the first runner-up presidential candidate would become vice president, the process for selecting the vice president was later modified in the Twelfth Amendment. Each elector still receives two votes, but now one of those votes is for president, while the other is for vice president. The requirement that one of those votes be cast for a candidate not from the electors own state remains in effect. S, other statutorily granted roles include membership of both the National Security Council and the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. As President of the Senate, the president has two primary duties, to cast a vote in the event of a Senate deadlock and to preside over. For example, in the first half of 2001, the Senators were divided 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats and Dick Cheneys tie-breaking vote gave the Republicans the Senate majority, as President of the Senate, the vice president oversees procedural matters and may cast a tie-breaking vote. As President of the Senate, John Adams cast 29 tie-breaking votes that was surpassed by John C. Calhoun with 31. Adamss votes protected the presidents sole authority over the removal of appointees, influenced the location of the national capital, on at least one occasion Adams persuaded senators to vote against legislation he opposed, and he frequently addressed the Senate on procedural and policy matters

3.
Abraham Lincoln
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Abraham Lincoln was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its Civil War—its bloodiest war and perhaps its greatest moral, constitutional, in doing so, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the economy. Born in Hodgenville, Kentucky, Lincoln grew up on the frontier in Kentucky. Largely self-educated, he became a lawyer in Illinois, a Whig Party leader, elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1846, Lincoln promoted rapid modernization of the economy through banks, tariffs, and railroads. Reentering politics in 1854, he became a leader in building the new Republican Party, in 1860, Lincoln secured the Republican Party presidential nomination as a moderate from a swing state. Though he gained little support in the slaveholding states of the South. Subsequently, on April 12,1861, a Confederate attack on Fort Sumter inspired the North to enthusiastically rally behind the Union. Politically, Lincoln fought back by pitting his opponents against each other, by carefully planned political patronage and his Gettysburg Address became an iconic endorsement of the principles of nationalism, republicanism, equal rights, liberty, and democracy. Lincoln initially concentrated on the military and political dimensions of the war and his primary goal was to reunite the nation. He suspended habeas corpus, leading to the ex parte Merryman decision. Lincoln closely supervised the war effort, especially the selection of top generals, including his most successful general, Lincoln tried repeatedly to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, each time a general failed, Lincoln substituted another, until finally Grant succeeded. As the war progressed, his moves toward ending slavery included the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. On April 14,1865, five days after the surrender of Confederate commanding general Robert E. Lee, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton launched a manhunt for Booth, and 12 days later on April 26, Lincoln has been consistently ranked both by scholars and the public as among the greatest U. S. presidents. Abraham Lincoln was born February 12,1809, the child of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, in a one-room log cabin on the Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville. He was a descendant of Samuel Lincoln, an Englishman who migrated from Hingham, Norfolk to its namesake of Hingham, samuels grandson and great-grandson began the familys western migration, which passed through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Lincolns paternal grandfather and namesake, Captain Abraham Lincoln, moved the family from Virginia to Jefferson County, Captain Lincoln was killed in an Indian raid in 1786. His children, including eight-year-old Thomas, the presidents father

4.
Ulysses S. Grant
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Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States. As Commanding General, Grant worked closely with President Abraham Lincoln to lead the Union Army to victory over the Confederacy in the American Civil War and he implemented Congressional Reconstruction, often at odds with President Andrew Johnson. His presidency has often criticized for tolerating corruption and for the severe economic depression in his second term. Grant graduated in 1843 from the United States Military Academy at West Point, after the war he married Julia Boggs Dent in 1848, their marriage producing four children. Grant initially retired from the Army in 1854 and he struggled financially in civilian life. When the Civil War began in 1861, he rejoined the U. S. Army, in 1862, Grant took control of Kentucky and most of Tennessee, and led Union forces to victory in the Battle of Shiloh, earning a reputation as an aggressive commander. He incorporated displaced African American slaves into the Union war effort, in July 1863, after a series of coordinated battles, Grant defeated Confederate armies and seized Vicksburg, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River and dividing the Confederacy in two. After his victories in the Chattanooga Campaign, Lincoln promoted him to lieutenant general, Grant confronted Robert E. Lee in a series of bloody battles, trapping Lees army in their defense of Richmond. Grant coordinated a series of devastating campaigns in other theaters, as well, in April 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, effectively ending the war. Historians have hailed Grants military genius, and his strategies are featured in history textbooks. After the Civil War, Grant led the armys supervision of Reconstruction in the former Confederate states and he also used the army to build the Republican Party in the South. After the disenfranchisement of some former Confederates, Republicans gained majorities, in his second term, the Republican coalitions in the South splintered and were defeated one by one as redeemers regained control using coercion and violence. In May 1875, Grant authorized his Secretary of Treasury Benjamin Bristow to shut down and his peace policy with the Indians initially reduced frontier violence, but is best known for the Great Sioux War of 1876. Grant responded to charges of corruption in executive offices more than any other 19th Century president and he appointed the first Civil Service Commission and signed legislation ending the corrupt moiety system. In foreign policy, Grant sought to trade and influence while remaining at peace with the world. His administration successfully resolved the Alabama claims by the Treaty of Washington with Great Britain, Grant avoided war with Spain over the Virginius Affair, but Congress rejected his attempted annexation of the Dominican Republic. His administration implemented a standard and sought to strengthen the dollar. Grant left office in 1877 and embarked on a two-year diplomatic world tour that captured the nations attention, in 1880, Grant was unsuccessful in obtaining the Republican presidential nomination for a third term

5.
Hannibal Hamlin
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Hannibal Hamlin was an American attorney and politician from the state of Maine. In a public career that spanned over 50 years, he is most notable for having served as the 15th Vice President of the United States. The first Republican to hold the office, Hamlin served from 1861 to 1865, a native of Paris, Maine, Hamlin was a descendant of an English family that had originally settled in New England in the 1600s. After his early education was complete, Hamlin managed his fathers farm before becoming a newspaper editor and he studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1833, and began to practice in Hampden, Maine. Originally a Democrat, Hamlin began his career with election to the Maine House of Representatives in 1835. As an officer in the militia, he took part in the 1839 negotiations that helped end the Aroostook War, in the 1840s Hamlin was elected and served in the United States House of Representatives. In 1848 the state elected him to the United States Senate. He served temporarily as governor for six weeks in the beginning of 1857, Hamlin was an active opponent of slavery, he supported the Wilmot Proviso and opposed the Compromise Measures of 1850. In 1854, he strongly opposed passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act, Hamlins increasingly anti-slavery views caused him to leave the Democratic Party for the newly formed Republican Party in 1856. The Lincoln and Hamlin ticket was successful, and Hamlin served as Vice President from 1861 to 1865, for the 1864 election, Hamlin was replaced as Vice Presidential nominee by Andrew Johnson, a southern Democrat chosen for his appeal to pro-Union southerners. The Republicans considered their support to be necessary during the reconciliation, Hamlin resigned as Collector because of disagreement with Johnson over Reconstruction of the former Confederacy. In 1869, Hamlin was elected again to the U. S. Senate, after leaving the Senate in 1881, he served briefly as United States Ambassador to Spain before returning to Maine in late 1882. In retirement, Hamlin was a resident of Bangor, Maine and he was buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in Bangor. Hamlin was born to Cyrus Hamlin and his wife Anna, née Livermore and he was a descendant in the sixth generation of English colonist James Hamlin, who had settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1639. He was a grandnephew of U. S, senator Samuel Livermore II of New Hampshire. Hamlin attended the schools and Hebron Academy and later managed his fathers farm. From 1827 to 1830 he published the Oxford Jeffersonian newspaper in partnership with Horatio King and he studied law with the firm headed by Samuel Fessenden, was admitted to the bar in 1833, and began practicing in Hampden, Maine, where he lived until 1848. Hamlin married Sarah Jane Emery of Paris Hill in 1833 and her father was Stephen Emery, who was appointed as Maines Attorney General in 1839–1840

6.
Schuyler Colfax
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Schuyler Colfax Jr. was a journalist, businessman, and politician from Indiana. He served as a United States Representative, Speaker of the House of Representatives, to date, he is one of only two Americans to have served as both House speaker and vice president. Colfax was known for his opposition to slavery while serving in Congress, in January 1865, as Speaker of the House, Colfax made the unusual choice to cast a vote for passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. After winning the election of 1868, Ulysses S. Grant and Colfax. Grant ran again, and Colfax reversed himself and attempted to win the presidential nomination. In January 1871, Colfax encouraged a unified Italy to adopt a republican government that protected religious freedom, Colfax left the vice presidency at the end of his term in 1873 and never again ran for office. Afterwards he worked as a executive and became a popular lecturer. Colfax died in Mankato, Minnesota on January 13,1885 while changing trains as he was en route to Rock Rapids, Iowa to give a speech. Schuyler Colfax was born on March 23,1823, in New York City to Schuyler Colfax Sr. a bank teller, and Hannah Delameter Stryker, william was commander at Sandy Hook during the War of 1812. Colfaxs father contracted tuberculosis and died on October 30,1822 and his sister Mary died in July 1823,4 months after he was born. His mother later remarried, becoming the wife of George W. Mathews, Colfaxs mother and grandmother ran a boarding house as their primary means of economic support. In 1836 Colfaxs family moved to New Carlisle, Indiana, in 1841 Mathews was elected St. Joseph County Auditor, and he appointed Colfax as his deputy, a post which Colfax held for all eight years Mathews served as auditor. Colfax became interested in journalism and covered the Indiana Senate for the Indiana State Journal, in 1845 Colfax purchased the newspaper and changed its name to the St. Joseph Valley Register. In addition to covering the Indiana Senate, Colfax contributed articles on Indiana politics to the New York Tribune, leading to a friendship with its editor, at 19 Colfax became the editor of the pro-Whig South Bend Free Press. He owned the Register for nine years, at first in support of the Whigs, on October 10,1844 Colfax married childhood friend Evelyn Clark. On November 18,1868, two weeks after he was elected president, Colfax married Ellen M. Wade, a niece of Senator Benjamin Wade. They had one son, Schuyler Colfax III, who served as mayor of South Bend, Colfax was a delegate to the 1848 Whig National Convention. He was also a delegate to the constitutional convention of 1849-50

7.
United States Senate
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The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress which, along with the House of Representatives, the lower chamber, composes the legislature of the United States. The composition and powers of the Senate are established by Article One of the United States Constitution. S. From 1789 until 1913, Senators were appointed by the legislatures of the states represented, following the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913. The Senate chamber is located in the wing of the Capitol, in Washington. It further has the responsibility of conducting trials of those impeached by the House, in the early 20th century, the practice of majority and minority parties electing their floor leaders began, although they are not constitutional officers. This idea of having one chamber represent people equally, while the other gives equal representation to states regardless of population, was known as the Connecticut Compromise, there was also a desire to have two Houses that could act as an internal check on each other. One was intended to be a Peoples House directly elected by the people, the other was intended to represent the states to such extent as they retained their sovereignty except for the powers expressly delegated to the national government. The Senate was thus not designed to serve the people of the United States equally, the Constitution provides that the approval of both chambers is necessary for the passage of legislation. First convened in 1789, the Senate of the United States was formed on the example of the ancient Roman Senate, the name is derived from the senatus, Latin for council of elders. James Madison made the comment about the Senate, In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people. An agrarian law would take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation, landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority, the senate, therefore, ought to be this body, and to answer these purposes, the people ought to have permanency and stability. The Constitution stipulates that no constitutional amendment may be created to deprive a state of its equal suffrage in the Senate without that states consent, the District of Columbia and all other territories are not entitled to representation in either House of the Congress. The District of Columbia elects two senators, but they are officials of the D. C. city government. The United States has had 50 states since 1959, thus the Senate has had 100 senators since 1959. In 1787, Virginia had roughly ten times the population of Rhode Island, whereas today California has roughly 70 times the population of Wyoming and this means some citizens are effectively two orders of magnitude better represented in the Senate than those in other states. Seats in the House of Representatives are approximately proportionate to the population of each state, before the adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, Senators were elected by the individual state legislatures

8.
Tennessee
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Tennessee is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th largest and the 16th most populous of the 50 United States, Tennessee is bordered by Kentucky and Virginia to the north, North Carolina to the east, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to the south, and Arkansas and Missouri to the west. The Appalachian Mountains dominate the eastern part of the state, Tennessees capital and second largest city is Nashville, which has a population of 654,610. Memphis is the states largest city, with a population of 655,770, the state of Tennessee is rooted in the Watauga Association, a 1772 frontier pact generally regarded as the first constitutional government west of the Appalachians. What is now Tennessee was initially part of North Carolina, Tennessee was admitted to the Union as the 16th state on June 1,1796. Tennessee was the last state to leave the Union and join the Confederacy at the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, occupied by Union forces from 1862, it was the first state to be readmitted to the Union at the end of the war. Tennessee furnished more soldiers for the Confederate Army than any other state besides Virginia and this sharply reduced competition in politics in the state until after passage of civil rights legislation in the mid-20th century. This city was established to house the Manhattan Projects uranium enrichment facilities, helping to build the worlds first atomic bomb, Tennessees major industries include agriculture, manufacturing, and tourism. Poultry, soybeans, and cattle are the primary agricultural products, and major manufacturing exports include chemicals, transportation equipment. In the early 18th century, British traders encountered a Cherokee town named Tanasi in present-day Monroe County, the town was located on a river of the same name, and appears on maps as early as 1725. The meaning and origin of the word are uncertain, some accounts suggest it is a Cherokee modification of an earlier Yuchi word. It has been said to mean meeting place, winding river, according to ethnographer James Mooney, the name can not be analyzed and its meaning is lost. The modern spelling, Tennessee, is attributed to James Glen, the governor of South Carolina, the spelling was popularized by the publication of Henry Timberlakes Draught of the Cherokee Country in 1765. In 1788, North Carolina created Tennessee County, the county to be established in what is now Middle Tennessee. When a constitutional convention met in 1796 to organize a new out of the Southwest Territory. Other sources differ on the origin of the nickname, according to the Columbia Encyclopedia. Tennessee ties Missouri as the state bordering the most other states, the state is trisected by the Tennessee River. The highest point in the state is Clingmans Dome at 6,643 feet, Clingmans Dome, which lies on Tennessees eastern border, is the highest point on the Appalachian Trail, and is the third highest peak in the United States east of the Mississippi River

9.
William Gannaway Brownlow
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William Gannaway Parson Brownlow was an American newspaper editor, minister, and politician. He served as Governor of Tennessee from 1865 to 1869 and as a United States Senator from Tennessee from 1869 to 1875, at the same time, Brownlow was successfully building a large base of fiercely loyal subscribers. Brownlow returned to Tennessee in 1863 and in 1865 became the war governor with the U. S. Army behind him and he joined the Radical Republicans and spent much of his term opposing the policies of his longtime political foe Andrew Johnson. His gubernatorial policies, which were both autocratic and progressive, helped Tennessee become the first former Confederate state to be readmitted to the Union in 1866, Brownlow was born in Wythe County, Virginia, in 1805, the eldest son of Joseph Brownlow and Catherine Gannaway. Joseph Brownlow, an itinerant farmer, died in 1816, Brownlow and his four siblings were split up among relatives, with Brownlow spending the remainder of his childhood on his uncle John Gannaways farm. At age 18, Brownlow went to Abingdon where he learned the trade of carpentry from another uncle, in 1825, Brownlow attended a camp meeting near Sulphur Springs, Virginia, where he experienced a dramatic spiritual rebirth. He later recalled that, suddenly, all my anxieties were at an end, all my hopes were realized and he immediately abandoned the carpentry trade and began studying to become a Methodist minister. In Fall 1826, he attended the meeting of the Holston Conference of the Methodist Church in Abingdon. He applied to join the ministry, and was admitted that year by Bishop Joshua Soule. In 1826, Soule gave Brownlow his first assignment— the Black Mountain circuit in North Carolina, Brownlow, however, took such debates to a whole new level, attacking not only Baptist and Presbyterian theology, but also the character of his rival missionaries. In 1828, he was sued for slander, but the suit was dismissed, in 1831, he was sued for libel by a Baptist preacher, and ordered to pay his accuser $5. In 1832, Brownlow was assigned to the Pickens District in South Carolina, Brownlows run-in with the nullifiers would later influence his views on secession. In 1836, Brownlow married Eliza OBrien, and the two settled down in her hometown of Elizabethton, Tennessee, where he took a job as a clerk at her familys iron foundry. Historian Stephen Ash says, What made the Parson stand out was, more than anything else, his vitriolic tongue, over the course of his long career he took up many causes. These included not only Methodism, Whiggery, and the Union, but also temperance, Know-Nothingism and his favorite method of promoting those causes was to chastise and ridicule his opponents, and few men could do so with as much venomous wit as he. Not surprisingly, he made many enemies, a number of them replied in kind, some tried to kill him. Brownlow gave up circuit riding and quickly settled with the family of his newly wed wife in Elizabethton during 1839, nelson suggested that Brownlow should launch a newspaper to support Whig Party candidates in the upcoming elections. Brownlow partnered in Elizabethton with newspaper publisher, and former Emmerson associate, Mason R. Lyon, as Brownlows vituperative editorial style quickly brought bitter division to Elizabethton, and he began quarreling with local Whig-turned-Democrat Landon Carter Haynes

10.
David M. Key
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David McKendree Key was a Democratic U. S. Senator from Tennessee from 1875 to 1877 as well as the U. S, Postmaster General under President Hayes, and a United States federal judge. Key was born in Greene County, Tennessee, the son of Reverend John, in 1826 the family moved to Monroe County where Key was reared, graduating from Hiwassee College in 1850. He selected the profession as his vocation through life. He practiced law for two years at Madisonville, then worked for a time in Kingston. He moved to Chattanooga in February 1853 and he married Elizabeth Lenoir in 1857, and fathered nine children. When the Civil War broke out, Key enlisted in the Forty-third Confederate Tennessee Regiment of Infantry, served until the close of the war and he then resumed the practice of law in Chattanooga until 1868. Key was a member of the Tennessee state constitutional convention of 1870, in August of the same year, he was elected chancellor of the Chattanooga division, defeating the Republican incumbent, Daniel C. Defeated in the senate election in the Tennessee General Assembly, Key was appointed Postmaster General in 1877 by President Hayes. His appointment as Postmaster General was part of the Compromise of 1877, keys work as Postmaster General is harshly criticized by Mark Twain in The Autobiography of Mark Twain. Key was confirmed by the United States Senate on May 27,1880, Key retired from the bench on January 21,1895. He died in Chattanooga in 1900 and is buried there, list of United States political appointments across party lines David McK. Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, Key at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center. Goodspeed Publishing, History of East Tennessee, Hamilton County, dictionary of American Biography Abshire, David. The South Rejects a Prophet, The Life of David Key, murrin, John M. Liberty, Equality, Power

11.
James C. Jones
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James Chamberlain Jones was an American politician who served as the Governor of Tennessee from 1841 to 1845, and as a United States Senator from Tennessee from 1851 to 1857. A Whig, Jones twice defeated rising politician James K. Polk for the governorship and he was the first native-born Tennessean to be elected governor. Joness first gubernatorial term was marked by gridlock with the state senate and his second term was more productive, as his fellow Whigs controlled both houses of the legislature. Though he later joined the Democratic Party, Joness speaking skills, a thin man whose nickname was Lean Jimmy, Jones was born in Davidson County, Tennessee, the son of Peter and Catherine Chappell Jones. His parents died when he was young, and he was raised by an uncle in Wilson County. After marrying Sarah Munford in 1829, he purchased a farm near Lebanon, in 1836, Jones supported the presidential campaign of Hugh Lawson White, a former Democrat who had turned against Andrew Jackson and joined the Whig Party. The following year, Jones was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives, in 1840, Jones was an elector for presidential candidate William Henry Harrison. While in the legislature, Jones studied law, but never practiced, in 1841, the Tennessee Whigs nominated Jones as their candidate for governor. The Whigs believed that Jones, widely known as a speaker and storyteller, was their best shot to defeat incumbent governor. After besting Polk in a series of debates in the Spring of 1841, following the election of 1841, Whigs controlled the state House of Representatives, but Democrats held onto the state senate by a 13 to 12 margin. One of the first tasks of the new government was to fill the U. S. Senate seats left vacant by the resignations of Alexander O. Anderson, Democrats demanded one of the two seats go to a Democrat, a request the Whigs rejected. S. Senate for most of 1842 and 1843, though the government was mostly gridlocked by the Immortal Thirteen during Joness first term, it did manage to enact debt reform legislation in 1842. In the election of 1843, Polk canvassed the state extensively in hopes of taking back the governors office, furthermore, Whigs gained control of the state senate, ending the Immortal Thirteen gridlock, and two Whigs were appointed to the states U. S. Senate seats. Joness second term saw the establishment of a school for the blind in Nashville. In 1843, Nashville, which had been serving as the capital of the state for years, was officially selected as the states permanent capital. The cornerstone for the Tennessee State Capitol was laid while Jones was still governor, Jones did not seek a third term, choosing instead to accept an offer to become president of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. He was an elector for Zachary Taylor in the U. S. presidential election of 1848, in 1851, the state legislature chose Jones to replace Hopkins L. Turney in the U. S. Senate. Jones supported Winfield Scott in the election of 1852, but afterward began to drift apart from the Whig Party

12.
David T. Patterson
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David Trotter Patterson was a United States Senator from Tennessee at the beginning of the Reconstruction Period. He presented his credentials to the Senate on July 26, but they were challenged, david Trotter Patterson was born at Cedar Creek, near Greeneville, Tennessee, on February 28,1818. He attended the schools and later Greeneville College for two years. He read the law with a local office to prepare for the bar. After being admitted to the bar in 1841, Trotter practiced as an attorney in Greeneville and he was appointed as a judge of the first circuit court of Tennessee 1854-1863. In addition, he acquired substantial amounts of land in East Tennessee, in 1855, Patterson married Martha Johnson, daughter of the former Tennessee Governor and Senator Andrew Johnson and his wife Eliza McCardle. His father-in-law Andrew Johnson had succeeded as President of the United States following Lincolns assassination the year before, when Johnson was impeached by the United States House of Representatives in February 1868, which caused Patterson personal conflict. According to the U. S. Constitution, the Senate had the duty to try Johnson on the charges and their vote was one short of the constitutional requirement of a two-thirds majority. Patterson retired from life when his Senate term expired on March 4,1869. He returned to East Tennessee to manage his relatively vast agricultural interests, on November 3,1891, Patterson died in the small community of Afton. He was interred with the Johnson family in the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery in Greeneville, “David T. Patterson, ” in Tennessee Senators as Seen by One of Their Successors, Kingsport, Tenn. Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, a Short History of the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery, National Park Service

13.
Governor of Tennessee
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The Governor of Tennessee is the head of government of the U. S. state of Tennessee. The governor is the official in Tennessee state government who is directly elected by the voters of the entire state. The current governor is Bill Haslam, a Republican, Haslam won election in November 2010 and took office on January 15,2011. The Tennessee Constitution provides that the governor must be at least 30 years old, the governor is elected to a four-year term and may serve no more than two terms consecutively. The governor is the official of the Tennessee state government who is directly elected by the voters of the entire state. There are only two other U. S. states, New Jersey and Hawaii, where the governor is the state official to be elected statewide. The Tennessee Constitution provides that “The supreme executive power of state shall be vested in a governor. ”Most state department heads and some members of boards. The governor is the commander-in-chief of the army and navy. The Tennessee governor can veto laws passed by the Tennessee General Assembly and has veto authority for individual spending items included in bills passed by the legislature. In either situation, the veto can be overridden by a simple majority of both houses of the legislature. If a governor exercises the authority after the legislature has adjourned. It is uncommon for Tennessee governors to use their veto power, the state constitution empowers the governor to call the General Assembly into special session, with the subjects to be considered limited to matters specified in the call. As of 2010, the salary was set at $170,340 per year. This is the ninth highest U. S. gubernatorial salary, Haslam and his predecessor, Phil Bredesen, both were independently wealthy before taking office and refused to accept state salaries for their service as governor. Tennessee does not elect a lieutenant governor, because this has the effect of making the speaker the lieutenant governor, the speaker is often referred to by the title lieutenant governor. And was also granted this title by statute in 1951, following the lieutenant governor/senate speaker in the line of succession are the speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives, the secretary of state, and the comptroller. Governor William Blount served from 1790 to 1796, when Tennessee was known as the Southwest Territory and he was replaced by John Sevier, the states first governor. Other notable governors include Willie Blount, Sam Houston, and future U. S Presidents James K. Polk and Andrew Johnson

14.
Isham G. Harris
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Isham Green Harris was an American politician who served as Governor of Tennessee from 1857 to 1862, and as a U. S. Senator from 1877 until his death and he was the states first governor from West Tennessee. Harris rose to prominence in politics in the late 1840s when he campaigned against the anti-slavery initiatives of northern Whigs. He was elected governor amidst rising sectional strife in the late 1850s and his war-time efforts eventually raised over 100,000 soldiers for the Confederate cause. After the Union Army gained control of Middle and West Tennessee in 1862, following the war, he spent several years in exile in Mexico and England. After returning to Tennessee, Harris became a leader of the states Bourbon Democrats, during his tenure in the U. S. Senate, he championed states rights and currency expansion. As the Senates president pro tempore in the 1890s, Harris led the charge against President Grover Clevelands attempts to repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, Harris was born in Franklin County, Tennessee near Tullahoma. He was the child of Isham Green Harris, a farmer and Methodist minister. His parents had moved from North Carolina to Middle Tennessee in 1806 and he was educated at Carrick Academy in Winchester, Tennessee, until he was fourteen. He moved to Paris, Tennessee, where he joined up with his brother William, an attorney, while in Ripley, Harris studied law. He sold his successful business three years later for $7,000 and returned to Paris where he continued studying law under Judge Andrew McCampbell, on May 3,1841, he was admitted to the bar in Henry County and began a lucrative practice in Paris. He was considered one of the leading attorneys in the state. On July 6,1843, Harris married Martha Mariah Travis, the daughter of Major Edward Travis, by 1850 the family had a 300-acre farm and a home in Paris. By 1860 their total property was worth $45,000 and included twenty slaves, in 1847, Henry County Democrats convinced Harris to run for the districts Tennessee Senate seat in hopes of countering a strong campaign by local Whig politician William Hubbard. Anti-war comments made in August by the districts Whig congressional candidate, William T. Haskell, damaged Hubbards campaign, Harris easily defeated the last minute Whig replacement, Joseph Roerlhoe. Shortly after taking his seat, he sponsored a resolution condemning the Wilmot Proviso, in 1848, Harris was an elector for unsuccessful presidential candidate Lewis Cass. In May of that year, he engaged in a debate in Clarksville with Aaron Goodrich. Harris was nominated as the Democratic candidate for the states 9th District seat in the U. S. House of Representatives in 1849, after successfully tying his opponent to unpopular positions of the national Whig Party, Harris won the election easily

15.
List of Governors of Tennessee
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This is a list of people who have served as Governor of Tennessee. The governors term in office is limited by the Tennessee state constitution, the first constitution, enacted in 1796, set a term of two years for the governor and provided that no person could serve as governor for more than six years in any eight-year period. The term of office was lengthened to four years, without the possibility of consecutive terms, under the current provisions of the state constitution, as amended in 1978, the governor is elected to a four-year term and may serve no more than two terms consecutively. For a period of five decades in the 20th century. However, since 1967 no two successive governors have belonged to the same party, according to the Tennessee Blue Book, Tennessee has had 49 governors, including the incumbent, Bill Haslam. This tally does not include William Blount or Robert L. Caruthers, all governors are counted only once, regardless of number of terms served. The Blue Book does not include Edward H, east in its list of governors. The Territory South of the River Ohio, commonly called the Southwest Territory, was formed in 1790 from lands ceded by North Carolina to the United States government, the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Tennessee in 1796. All representatives and senators mentioned represented Tennessee except where noted, * denotes those offices which the governor resigned to take. As of January 2017, there are four former governors who are living at this time. The most recent death of a former Tennessee governor was that of Ned McWherter, on April 4,2011, specific General Tennessee Government and Politics, Democracy in the Volunteer State p.43, John R. Vile and Mark E. Byrnes. 1998, Vanderbilt University Press Tennessee Blue Book, Historical Listings of Constitutional Officers Tennessee Blue Book, Past Governors of Tennessee

16.
William B. Campbell
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William Bowen Campbell was an American politician and soldier. He served as Governor of Tennessee from 1851 to 1853, and was the states last Whig governor and he also served four terms in the United States House of Representatives, from 1837 to 1843, and from 1866 to 1867. During the Mexican-American War, Campbell commanded the First Regiment Tennessee Volunteers, at the outbreak of the American Civil War, Campbell opposed secession, and briefly served as a general in the Union Army. Campbell was born on Manskers Creek in Sumner County, Tennessee, to David and he studied law at Abingdon, Virginia, with his fathers cousin, Virginia Governor David Campbell, and attended lectures at Winchester Law School. He returned to Tennessee in 1829 in order to establish a law practice at Carthage and he was admitted to the bar in 1830. In 1831, he was appointed attorney general for a state circuit, in 1835, Campbell moved back to Carthage, and was elected to Smith Countys seat in the Tennessee House of Representatives. He resigned his seat in 1836, however, in order to fight in the Second Seminole War and he served as a captain under Colonel William Trousdale. In 1837, Campbell successfully ran against Trousdale for the states 6th District seat in the United States House of Representatives, the campaign was spirited, though there was no bitterness between the two candidates. In 1839, Campbell ran for reelection, again defeating Trousdale, near the end of his third term in 1843 he resigned and returned to his law practice in Carthage. That same year, he was appointed major-general of the Tennessee militia, upon the outbreak of the Mexican-American War in 1846, Campbell answered Tennessee Governor Aaron V. Browns call for volunteers. He was elected colonel of the First Regiment Tennessee Volunteers on June 3,1846, at the Battle of Monterrey later that year, this company lost one-third of its men in an assault on the towns citadel, earning the nickname, the Bloody First. Campbells company also saw action at the Siege of Veracruz and the Battle of Cerro Gordo in 1847, after the war, Campbell was appointed by the legislature to a state circuit court judgeship. In 1851, he received the Whig nomination for governor and his opponent was William Trousdale, his old Seminole War superior, who had been elected in a close election in 1849. He accused Campbell of being too favorable to northern views, Campbell on the other hand called the Compromise a work of wisdom, and derided the Nashville Convention as treasonous. Running with the slogan, Boys, follow me. Which he had yelled at the Battle of Monterrey, Campbell edged Trousdale by a vote of 63,333 to 61,673, as governor, Campbell called for a more rational approach to resolving sectional strife, and demanded an end to the insane talk of secession. After his initial term in 1853, he did not run for reelection, instead choosing to accept a position as President of the Bank of Middle Tennessee in Lebanon, Tennessee. The Whigs nominated Gustavus A. Henry, who was defeated by the Democratic candidate Andrew Johnson in the general election, following the collapse of the Whig Party in the mid-1850s, Campbell threw his support behind the American Party, which many Tennessee Whigs had joined

17.
United States House of Representatives
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The United States House of Representatives is the lower chamber of the United States Congress which, along with the Senate, composes the legislature of the United States. The composition and powers of the House are established by Article One of the United States Constitution, since its inception in 1789, all representatives are elected popularly. The total number of voting representatives is fixed by law at 435, the House is charged with the passage of federal legislation, known as bills, which, after concurrence by the Senate, are sent to the President for consideration. The presiding officer is the Speaker of the House, who is elected by the members thereof and is traditionally the leader of the controlling party. He or she and other leaders are chosen by the Democratic Caucus or the Republican Conferences. The House meets in the wing of the United States Capitol. Under the Articles of Confederation, the Congress of the Confederation was a body in which each state was equally represented. All states except Rhode Island agreed to send delegates, the issue of how to structure Congress was one of the most divisive among the founders during the Convention. The House is referred to as the house, with the Senate being the upper house. Both houses approval is necessary for the passage of legislation, the Virginia Plan drew the support of delegates from large states such as Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, as it called for representation based on population. The smaller states, however, favored the New Jersey Plan, the Constitution was ratified by the requisite number of states in 1788, but its implementation was set for March 4,1789. The House began work on April 1,1789, when it achieved a quorum for the first time, during the first half of the 19th century, the House was frequently in conflict with the Senate over regionally divisive issues, including slavery. The North was much more populous than the South, and therefore dominated the House of Representatives, However, the North held no such advantage in the Senate, where the equal representation of states prevailed. Regional conflict was most pronounced over the issue of slavery, One example of a provision repeatedly supported by the House but blocked by the Senate was the Wilmot Proviso, which sought to ban slavery in the land gained during the Mexican–American War. Conflict over slavery and other issues persisted until the Civil War, the war culminated in the Souths defeat and in the abolition of slavery. Because all southern senators except Andrew Johnson resigned their seats at the beginning of the war, the years of Reconstruction that followed witnessed large majorities for the Republican Party, which many Americans associated with the Unions victory in the Civil War and the ending of slavery. The Reconstruction period ended in about 1877, the ensuing era, the Democratic and the Republican Party held majorities in the House at various times. The late 19th and early 20th centuries also saw an increase in the power of the Speaker of the House

18.
Tennessee's 1st congressional district
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The 1st Districts seat in the U. S. House of Representatives has been held by Republicans since 1881. The district was created in 1805 when the At-large seat was divided among multiple districts. S, House of Representatives in 1796 up to the term of Albert Galiton Watkins ending in 1859. Andrew Johnson later ascended to the office of President of the United States, the 1st was one of four districts in Tennessee whose congressmen did not resign when Tennessee seceded from the Union in 1861. Thomas Amos Rogers Nelson was reelected as a Unionist to the Thirty-seventh Congress, Nelson was paroled and returned home to Jonesborough, where he kept a low profile for the length of his term. Like the rest of East Tennessee, slavery was not as common in area as the rest of the state due to its mountain terrain. The district was also the home of the first exclusively abolitionist periodicals in the nation, The Manumission Intelligencer and The Emancipator and this allegiance has continued through good times and bad ever since, with Republicans dominating every level of government. While a few Democratic pockets exist in the urban areas. The district typically gives its congressmen long tenures in Washington, indeed, only eight people have represented it since 1921. Tennessees congressional districts List of United States congressional districts Political Graveyard database of Tennessee congressmen Martis, the Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress. The Historical Atlas of United States Congressional Districts, Congressional Biographical Directory of the United States 1774–present

19.
Raleigh, North Carolina
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Raleigh is the capital of the state of North Carolina, the seat of Wake County in the United States. Raleigh is known as the City of Oaks for its oak trees. The city covers a area of 142.8 square miles. The U. S. Census Bureau estimated the population as 451,066 as of July 1,2015. It is also one of the cities in the country. The city of Raleigh is named after Sir Walter Raleigh, who established the lost Roanoke Colony in present-day Dare County, Raleigh is home to North Carolina State University and is part of the Research Triangle area, together with Durham and Chapel Hill. The Triangle nickname originated after the 1959 creation of the Research Triangle Park, located in Durham and Wake Counties, partway between the three cities and their universities. The Research Triangle region encompasses the U. S. Census Bureaus Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Combined Statistical Area, the Raleigh Metropolitan Statistical Area had an estimated population of 1,214,516 in 2013. Most of Raleigh is located within Wake County, with a small portion extending into Durham County. Raleigh is an example in the United States of a planned city. It was chosen as the site of the capital in 1788. The city was laid out in a grid pattern with the North Carolina State Capitol in Union Square at the center. Raleigh is home to cultural, educational, and historic sites. The Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts in Downtown Raleigh features three venues and serves as the home for the North Carolina Symphony and the Carolina Ballet. Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek is a large music amphitheater located in southeast Raleigh, one U. S. president, Andrew Johnson, was born in Raleigh. Bath, the oldest town in North Carolina, was the first nominal capital from 1705 until 1722, the colony had no permanent institutions of government until the establishment at the new capital New Bern in 1743. In December 1770, Joel Lane successfully petitioned the North Carolina General Assembly to create a new county, on January 5,1771, the bill creating Wake County was passed in the General Assembly. The county was formed from portions of Cumberland, Orange, the county gets its name from Margaret Wake Tryon, the wife of Governor William Tryon

20.
Elizabethton, Tennessee
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Elizabethton is a city in, and the county seat of Carter County, Tennessee, United States. Elizabethton is the site of the first independent American government located west of both the Eastern Continental Divide and the original Thirteen Colonies. The city is also the site of the Transylvania Purchase. It was within the secessionist North Carolina State of Franklin territory, the population of Elizabethton was enumerated at 14,008 during the 2010 census. Elizabethton is located within the Tri-Cities area of northeast Tennessee, Time offset from Coordinated Universal Time, UTC-5. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 9.9 square miles, of which 9.7 square miles is land and 0.2 square miles. The elevation at Elizabethton Municipal Airport is 1,593 feet ASL, Elizabethton is also connected to larger commercial, shuttle, and cargo flights out of Tri-Cities Regional Airport northwest of Johnson City. Lynn Mountain reaches 2,060 feet ASL at the summit and is located directly across the U. S. Highway 19E from the downtown Elizabethton business district, Elizabethton is bordered on the west by Johnson City. The Doe River forms in Carter County, Tennessee, near the North Carolina line, just south of Roan Mountain State Park. The river initially flows north and is first paralleled by State Route 143, at the community of Roan Mountain, Tennessee, the Doe River flows to the east of Fork Mountain, the Little Doe River flows by Fork Mountain to the west. S. Pushing through a gap just north of Hampton, the volume of the river is amplified by the waters flowing from McCathern Spring. Connecting 3rd Street and Hattie Avenue, the bridge is adjacent to a city park. The covered bridge, although now closed to traffic, is still open for bicycles. Most of Elizabethtons downtown is listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its historical and architectural merits, the Elizabethton Historic District contains a variety of properties ranging in age from the late 18th century through the 1930s. The Elizabethton Covered Bridge is an important focal point and a landmark in the state. The Appalachian Trail crosses the Watauga River and the TVA reservation in Carter County to the southeast of Elizabethton, the Watauga River flows westward past Elizabethton, which lies on the south bank of the Watauga and along either side of its principal tributary, the Doe River. The downtown business district is located approximately one-quarter mile upstream of the confluence of the Doe River, the Doe River flows underneath the historic wooden covered bridge that is located within the Elizabethton downtown business district. The city of Elizabethton was at one time promoted as The City of Power, construction of Wilbur Dam first began during 1909, and two hydroelectric generating units were online with power production at Wilbur Dam when it was completed in 1912

21.
Andrew Johnson National Cemetery
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The Andrew Johnson National Cemetery is a United States National Cemetery on the grounds of the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site in Greeneville, Tennessee. Established in 1906, the cemetery was built around the place of Andrew Johnson, the seventeenth President of the United States. Andrew Johnson acquired twenty-three acres outside Greeneville on Signal Hill in 1852 and it is held by family tradition that Andrew Johnson greatly enjoyed the view the hill provided. It became known as Signal Hill due to being an excellent place for soldiers to signal to friendly forces, when Johnson died, he was buried on the property on August 3,1875. The funeral was performed by Freemasons, on June 5,1878, a 28-foot tall marble statue was placed by Johnsons grave. The monument was considered so dominant that the name was changed to Monument Hill. His daughter Martha Johnson Patterson willed on September 2,1898 that the land become a park and she further pushed in 1900 to make the site a national cemetery, so that instead of the Johnson family maintaining it, the federal government would. The United States Congress chose to make the site a National Cemetery in 1906, by 1939 there were 100 total graves in the cemetery. On May 23,1942, control of the went to the National Park Service. When the area was made a cemetery, two of Andrew Johnsons sons were reinterred, charles Johnson had been buried in Nashville, Tennessee, he died in 1863 by falling from a horse while serving as a military surgeon. Robert Johnson, who died shortly after the Johnsons 1869 return to Greeneville, had originally been buried in Greenevilles Mount Olivet, several other members of the Johnson family, including grandchildren, would later be buried in the cemetery. Amongst these are his daughter Martha and her husband, former Tennessee United States Senator David T. Patterson. When the National Park Service was given jurisdiction of the cemetery in 1942, they ruled to allow no more interments, aside from Andersonville National Cemetery, it is the only National Cemetery controlled by the United States Department of the Interior to accept new burials. The marble monument depicts the United States Constitution, an eagle, official website Historic American Landscapes Survey No

22.
Greeneville, Tennessee
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Greeneville is a town in, and the county seat of Greene County, Tennessee, United States. The population as of the 2010 census was 15,062, the town was named in honor of Revolutionary War hero Nathanael Greene. It is the town with this spelling in the United States. The town was the capital of the short-lived State of Franklin in the 18th-century history of the Tennessee region, Greeneville is notable as the town where President Andrew Johnson began his political career when elected from his trade as a tailor. He and his family lived there most of his adult years and it was an area of strong abolitionist and Unionist views and yeoman farmers, an environment which influenced Johnsons outlook. The Greeneville Historic District was established in 1974, the U. S. Navy Los Angeles-class submarine USS Greeneville was named in honor of the town. The town officially hosts the Greeneville Astros baseball club of the Appalachian League, Greeneville is part of the Johnson City-Kingsport- Bristol TN-VA Combined Statistical Area – commonly known as the Tri-Cities region. Greeneville is located at 36°10′6″N 82°49′21″W and it lies in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. These hills are part of the Appalachian Ridge-and-Valley Province, which is characterized by river valleys flanked by narrow. Greeneville is located halfway between Bays Mountain to the northwest and the Bald Mountains— part of the main Appalachian crest— to the southeast. The valley in which Greeneville is situated is part of the watershed of the Nolichucky River, several federal and state highways now intersect in Greeneville, as they were built to follow old roads and trails. U. S. Route 321 follows Main Street through the center of the town, U. S. Route 11E, which connects Greeneville with Morristown to the west, intersects U. S.321 in Greeneville and the merged highway proceeds northeast to Johnson City. Tennessee State Route 107, which also follows Main Street and Andrew Johnson Hwy, Greeneville to Erwin to the east, Tennessee State Route 70 connects Greeneville with Interstate 81, and Rogersville to the north and Asheville, North Carolina to the south. Tennessee State Route 172 connects Greeneville with Interstate 81 and Baileyton to the north, Tennessee State Route 93 connects Greeneville to Interstate 81, Fall Branch and Kingsport to the north. According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has an area of 17.01 square miles. Buckingham Heights Cherrydale Oak Hills Windy Hills Native Americans were hunting and camping in the Nolichucky Valley as early as the Paleo-Indian period, a substantial Woodland period village existed at the Nolichuckys confluence with Big Limestone Creek. By the time the first Euro-American settlers arrived in the area in the late 18th century, the Great Indian Warpath passed just northwest of modern Greeneville, and the townsite is believed to have once been the juncture of two lesser Native American trails. Permanent European settlement of Greene County began in 1772, the Nolichucky Settlement initially aligned itself with the Watauga Association as part of Washington County, North Carolina

23.
Democratic Party (United States)
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The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The Democrats dominant worldview was once socially conservative and fiscally classical liberalism, while, especially in the rural South, since Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal coalition in the 1930s, the Democratic Party has also promoted a social-liberal platform, supporting social justice. Today, the House Democratic caucus is composed mostly of progressives and centrists, the partys philosophy of modern liberalism advocates social and economic equality, along with the welfare state. It seeks to provide government intervention and regulation in the economy, the party has united with smaller left-wing regional parties throughout the country, such as the Farmer–Labor Party in Minnesota and the Nonpartisan League in North Dakota. Well into the 20th century, the party had conservative pro-business, the New Deal Coalition of 1932–1964 attracted strong support from voters of recent European extraction—many of whom were Catholics based in the cities. After Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal of the 1930s, the pro-business wing withered outside the South, after the racial turmoil of the 1960s, most southern whites and many northern Catholics moved into the Republican Party at the presidential level. The once-powerful labor union element became smaller and less supportive after the 1970s, white Evangelicals and Southerners became heavily Republican at the state and local level in the 1990s. However, African Americans became a major Democratic element after 1964, after 2000, Hispanic and Latino Americans, Asian Americans, the LGBT community, single women and professional women moved towards the party as well. The Northeast and the West Coast became Democratic strongholds by 1990 after the Republicans stopped appealing to socially liberal voters there, overall, the Democratic Party has retained a membership lead over its major rival the Republican Party. The most recent was the 44th president Barack Obama, who held the office from 2009 to 2017, in the 115th Congress, following the 2016 elections, Democrats are the opposition party, holding a minority of seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The party also holds a minority of governorships, and state legislatures, though they do control the mayoralty of cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Washington, D. C. The Democratic Party traces its origins to the inspiration of the Democratic-Republican Party, founded by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and that party also inspired the Whigs and modern Republicans. Organizationally, the modern Democratic Party truly arose in the 1830s, since the nomination of William Jennings Bryan in 1896, the party has generally positioned itself to the left of the Republican Party on economic issues. They have been liberal on civil rights issues since 1948. On foreign policy both parties changed position several times and that party, the Democratic-Republican Party, came to power in the election of 1800. After the War of 1812 the Federalists virtually disappeared and the national political party left was the Democratic-Republicans. The Democratic-Republican party still had its own factions, however. As Norton explains the transformation in 1828, Jacksonians believed the peoples will had finally prevailed, through a lavishly financed coalition of state parties, political leaders, and newspaper editors, a popular movement had elected the president

24.
National Union Party (United States)
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The National Union Party was the name used by the Republican Party for the national ticket in the 1864 presidential election, held during the Civil War. State Republican parties, for the most part, did not change their name, the temporary name was used to attract War Democrats and Border State Unionists who would not vote for the Republican Party. The party nominated incumbent President Abraham Lincoln and Democrat Andrew Johnson, the National Union Party was created in 1864 prior to the end of the Civil War. A faction of anti-Lincoln Radical Republicans held the belief that Lincoln was incompetent, a number of Radical Republicans formed a party called the Radical Democracy Party, and a few hundred delegates in Cleveland starting on May 31,1864, eventually nominating John C. Frémont, who had also been the Republicans first presidential standard-bearer during the 1856 U. S. presidential election and this is the main reason why War Democrat Andrew Johnson was selected to be the Vice Presidential nominee, then-current Vice President Hannibal Hamlin was not nominated. The National Unionists supporting the Lincoln-Johnson ticket also hoped that the new party would stress the national character of the war. But as an Abolition party, as a Republican party, as a Whig party, as a Democratic party, as an American party, I will not follow you one foot. I am not insensible at all to the personal compliment there is in this, yet I do not allow myself to believe that any, Lincoln did not show the pledge to his cabinet, but asked them to sign the sealed envelope. The complexion of the war changed as the election approached, Confederate Commander Robert E. Lees last victory in battle occurred June 3,1864, at Cold Harbor. Union General Ulysses S. Grants aggressive tactics trapped Lee in the trenches defending Richmond, admiral David Farragut successfully shut down Mobile Bay as a Confederate resource in the Battle of Mobile Bay, August 3–23,1864. Most decisive of all, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman captured Atlanta on September 1,1864, Frémont and his fellow Republicans hated their former ally U. S. Frémont, aware that his candidacy could result in victory for the Democrats, on September 22,1864, Frémont dropped out of the race. On September 23, Lincoln asked for, and received, Blairs resignation, the National Union ticket went on to win handily in the election of 1864, defeating the Democratic ticket of General George B. McClellan, whom Lincoln had previously relieved of his command, in the 1864 Congressional Elections, the party won 42 Senate seats, and 149 seats in the House of Representatives. These candidates ran under various party names, including National Union, Republican and Unconditional Union, upon Lincolns death in 1865, Andrew Johnson became the only other National Union President. After the bitter break with the Republicans in Congress over Reconstruction policies, Johnson used federal patronage to build up a party of loyalists, Johnsons friends sponsored the 1866 National Union Convention in August 1866 in Philadelphia as part of his attempt at maintaining a coalition of supporters. The convention sought to bring together moderate and conservative Republicans and defecting Democrats and forge a coalition behind President Andrew Johnson. In the fall of 1866 Johnson embarked upon a tour before the 1866 Congressional elections to attempt to garner support for his policies

25.
Eliza McCardle Johnson
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Eliza McCardle Johnson was the First Lady of the United States and the wife of Andrew Johnson, the 17th President of the United States. Born at Greeneville, Tennessee, the child of John McCardle, a shoemaker. She was raised by her mother in Greeneville, Tennessee. One day in September 1826, Eliza was chatting with classmates from Rhea Academy when she spotted Andrew Johnson and they instantly took a liking to each other. Andrew Johnson,18, married Eliza McCardle,16, on May 17,1827, mordecai Lincoln, a distant relative of Abraham Lincoln, presided over the nuptials. At 16, Eliza Johnson married at a younger age than any other First Lady and she was rather tall and had hazel eyes, brown hair and a good figure. She was better educated than Johnson, who by this time had barely taught himself to read, Johnson credited his wife for teaching him to do arithmetic and to write, as he had never attended school. She tutored him patiently, while he labored in his tailor shop and she often read aloud to him. The Johnsons had three sons and two daughters, all born in Greeneville, Martha Johnson and she married David T. Patterson, who after the Civil War served as U. S. She served as official White House hostess in place of her mother, the Pattersons maintained a farm outside Greeneville. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he remained loyal to the Union, while recruiting Tennessee boys for the Union Army, he became the object of an intense Confederate manhunt. He joined the Middle Tennessee Union Infantry as an assistant surgeon, he was thrown from his horse and she married Dan Stover, who served as colonel of the Fourth Tennessee Union Infantry during the Civil War. The Stovers lived on a farm in Carter County, Tennessee, following the death of her husband in 1864, she married W. R. Brown. Robert Johnson – lawyer and politician and he served for a time in the Tennessee state legislature. During the Civil War, he was commissioned colonel of the First Tennessee Union Cavalry and he was private secretary to his father during his tenure as president. He became alcoholic and committed suicide at age 35 and he founded the weekly Greeneville Intelligencer, but it failed after two years. He died soon thereafter at age 27 and she supported her husband in his political career, but had tried to avoid public appearances. During the American Civil War, Confederate authorities ordered her to evacuate her home in Greeneville, she took refuge in Nashville, Tennessee

26.
Jacob Johnson (father of Andrew Johnson)
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Jacob Johnson was the father of Andrew Johnson, the 17th President of the United States. Jacob Johnson was born on April 17,1778, some sources indicate he was born in Newcastle, England and sailed to America around 1795, but others say he was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, and it was his grandfather who came from England. Historian Rev. Nash A. Odom writes, In the year 1760, Peter Johnson, migrated from Kintyre Scotland to North Carolina with his large family, the preaching instinct broke out again and a number of the Johnsons became ministers. One was the father of Jacob Johnson, who moved to Raleigh, billy Kennedy writes that Jacobs father, an Ulster Presbyterian named Andrew Johnson, emigrated to North Carolina about 1750 from Mounthill, now in Northern Ireland. Genealogist and local historian Hugh Buckner Johnston, Jr, Hugh B. Johnston also published an article in May,1979 about the 1845 criminal trial of Matthew Johnson of Wake County, North Carolina, who was identified by Brownlow as a cousin of Andrew Johnson. Matthew Johnson was a son of Jesse Johnson of Raleigh, Henderson W. Johnson of Jasper County, Iowa, son of Moses Johnson of Carter County, Tennessee, wrote Andrew Johnson a letter dated February 8,1861 identifying himself as a cousin. Jesse Wheeler of Johnston County, North Carolina, while a prisoner of war at Point Lookout, Maryland, Wheeler identified his mother, Rulaney Wheeler, as Johnsons cousin. On August 2,1865, Jane Johnson of Raleigh, North Carolina and she identified her late husband, Jesse Johnson of Raleigh, as the President’s uncle. The theoretical ancestry put forth by Hugh B. Johnston was repeated in Hans L. Trefousse’s book, Andrew Johnson, A Biography. Two direct male descendants of Moses Johnson of Carter County, Tennessee, have been DNA tested, as well as a male descendant of Sylvanus Sill Johnson of Johnston County. The y-chromosome DNA test results confirm that the family of Jacob Johnson is not descended from Sylvanus Sill Johnson, in 2010, a direct male descendant of William Johnson of Brazoria County, Texas, brother of President Andrew Johnson, was also DNA tested. President Andrew Johnson’s paternal Johnson ancestors belong to Haplogroup I2b, Jacob Johnson married Mary Polly McDonough on September 9,1801 in Wake County, North Carolina. They had three children, William Patterson Johnson, Elizabeth Johnson, and Andrew Johnson, Andrew is thought to have been named after his maternal grandfather, Andrew McDonough. Known as mud-sills, Jacob and Mary Johnson were both employed at Cassos Inn, where Mary worked as a weaver and clothes washer, and Jacob was a hostler. Jacob also was a militia Captain of Muster Division 20, a sexton for the Presbyterian Church, Jacob Johnson is also said to have been the sole bell toller in Raleigh. The Johnson family log home was on property owned by Cassos Inn, Cassos Inn was owned by Peter Casso, a Revolutionary War soldier. The Johnson home is now preserved at Mordecai Historic Park in Raleigh, the third occupant of the skiff, Mr. William Peace, had no trouble getting to shore. Johnson jumped in the water and saved Henderson and Callum, to the detriment of his own health and he died several weeks later, ironically, while ringing the funeral bell at the State Capitol Building

27.
Union Army
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The Union Army was the land force that fought for the Union during the American Civil War,1861 to 1865. It included the permanent regular army of the United States, which was augmented by numbers of temporary units consisting of volunteers as well as conscripts. The Union Army fought and eventually defeated the Confederate Army during the war, at least two and a half million men served in the Union Army, almost all were volunteers. About 360,000 Union soldiers died from all causes,280,000 were wounded and 200,000 deserted. When the American Civil War began in April 1861, there were only 16,000 men in the U. S. Army, and of these many Southern officers resigned and joined the Confederate army. The U. S. Army consisted of ten regiments of infantry, four of artillery, Lincolns call forced the border states to choose sides, and four seceded, making the Confederacy eleven states strong. The war proved to be longer and more extensive than anyone North or South had expected, the call for volunteers initially was easily met by patriotic Northerners, abolitionists, and even immigrants who enlisted for a steady income and meals. Over 10,000 Germans in New York and Pennsylvania immediately responded to Lincolns call, as more men were needed, however, the number of volunteers fell and both money bounties and forced conscription had to be turned to. Nevertheless, between April 1861 and April 1865, at least two and a million men served in the Union Army, of whom the majority were volunteers. It is a misconception that the South held an advantage because of the percentage of professional officers who resigned to join the Confederate army. At the start of the war, there were 824 graduates of the U. S, Military Academy on the active list, of these,296 resigned or were dismissed, and 184 of those became Confederate officers. Of the approximately 900 West Point graduates who were civilians,400 returned to the Union Army and 99 to the Confederate. Therefore, the ratio of Union to Confederate professional officers was 642 to 283, the South did have the advantage of other military colleges, such as The Citadel and Virginia Military Institute, but they produced fewer officers. The Union Army was composed of numerous organizations, which were generally organized geographically, Military Division A collection of Departments reporting to one commander. Military Divisions were similar to the modern term Theater, and were modeled close to, though not synonymous with. Department An organization that covered a region, including responsibilities for the Federal installations therein. Those named for states usually referred to Southern states that had been occupied and it was more common to name departments for rivers or regions. District A subdivision of a Department, there were also Subdistricts for smaller regions

28.
Brigadier general (United States)
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In the United States Armed Forces, brigadier general is a one-star general officer with the pay grade of O-7 in the U. S. Army, U. S. Marine Corps, and U. S. Air Force. Brigadier general ranks above a colonel and below major general, the rank of brigadier general is equivalent to the rank of rear admiral in the other uniformed services. The rank of brigadier general has existed in the U. S. military since the inception of the Continental Army in June 1775, later, on June 18,1780, it was prescribed that brigadier generals would instead wear a single silver star on each epaulette. At first, brigadier generals were infantry officers who commanded a brigade, however, over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, the responsibilities of the rank expanded significantly. During the period from March 16,1802, to January 11,1812, foreseeing the need for an expanded general staff in case of war, which seemed imminent, Congress restored the rank of major general in January 1812. The first brigadier general in the U. S. Marine Corps was Commandant Archibald Henderson, the insignia for a brigadier general is one silver star worn on the shoulder or collar, and has not changed since the creation of the rank two centuries ago. Since the Mexican-American War, however, the rank of colonel has been the normal rank appointed to command a brigade that is organic to a division. In an infantry brigade not organic to a division, a brigadier general serves as the units commander, an Air Force brigadier general typically commands a large wing. Additionally, one-star officers of all services may serve as staff officers in large military organizations. U. S. Code of law explicitly limits the number of general officers who may be on active duty. The total of active duty general officers is capped at 230 for the Army,60 for the Marine Corps, the President or Secretary of Defense may increase the number of general slots in one branch, so long as they subtract an equal number from another. Some of these slots are reserved by statute, for promotion to the permanent grade of brigadier general, eligible officers are screened by a promotion board consisting of general officers from their branch of service. This promotion board then generates a list of officers it recommends for promotion to general rank and this list is then sent to the service secretary and the joint chiefs for review before it can be sent to the President, through the defense secretary, for consideration. The President nominates officers to be promoted from this list with the advice of the Secretary of Defense, the secretary, and if applicable. The President may nominate any eligible officer who is not on the recommended list if it serves in the interest of the nation, the Senate must then confirm the nominee by a majority vote before the officer can be promoted. Once the nominee is confirmed, they are promoted to that once they assume or hold an office that requires or allows an officer of that rank. For positions of office reserved by statute, the President nominates an officer for appointment to fill that position, for all three uniformed services, because the grade of brigadier general is a permanent rank, the nominee may still be screened by an in-service promotion board. The rank does not expire when the officer vacates a one-star position, tour length varies depending on the position, by statute, or when the officer receives a new assignment

29.
American Civil War
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The American Civil War was an internal conflict fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865. The Union faced secessionists in eleven Southern states grouped together as the Confederate States of America, the Union won the war, which remains the bloodiest in U. S. history. Among the 34 U. S. states in February 1861, War broke out in April 1861 when Confederates attacked the U. S. fortress of Fort Sumter. The Confederacy grew to eleven states, it claimed two more states, the Indian Territory, and the southern portions of the western territories of Arizona. The Confederacy was never recognized by the United States government nor by any foreign country. The states that remained loyal, including border states where slavery was legal, were known as the Union or the North, the war ended with the surrender of all the Confederate armies and the dissolution of the Confederate government in the spring of 1865. The war had its origin in the issue of slavery. The Confederacy collapsed and 4 million slaves were freed, but before his inauguration, seven slave states with cotton-based economies formed the Confederacy. The first six to declare secession had the highest proportions of slaves in their populations, the first seven with state legislatures to resolve for secession included split majorities for unionists Douglas and Bell in Georgia with 51% and Louisiana with 55%. Alabama had voted 46% for those unionists, Mississippi with 40%, Florida with 38%, Texas with 25%, of these, only Texas held a referendum on secession. Eight remaining slave states continued to reject calls for secession, outgoing Democratic President James Buchanan and the incoming Republicans rejected secession as illegal. Lincolns March 4,1861 inaugural address declared that his administration would not initiate a civil war, speaking directly to the Southern States, he reaffirmed, I have no purpose, directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the United States where it exists. I believe I have no right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. After Confederate forces seized numerous federal forts within territory claimed by the Confederacy, efforts at compromise failed, the Confederates assumed that European countries were so dependent on King Cotton that they would intervene, but none did, and none recognized the new Confederate States of America. Hostilities began on April 12,1861, when Confederate forces fired upon Fort Sumter, while in the Western Theater the Union made significant permanent gains, in the Eastern Theater, the battle was inconclusive in 1861–62. The autumn 1862 Confederate campaigns into Maryland and Kentucky failed, dissuading British intervention, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which made ending slavery a war goal. To the west, by summer 1862 the Union destroyed the Confederate river navy, then much of their western armies, the 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River. In 1863, Robert E. Lees Confederate incursion north ended at the Battle of Gettysburg, Western successes led to Ulysses S. Grants command of all Union armies in 1864

30.
List of Presidents of the United States
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The President of the United States is the elected head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces. The president is elected to a four-year term by the people through an Electoral College. Since the office was established in 1789,44 people have served as president, the first, George Washington, won a unanimous vote of the Electoral College. Grover Cleveland served two terms in office, and is counted as the nations 22nd and 24th president. Thus the incumbent, Donald Trump, is the nations 45th president, there are currently five living former presidents. The most recent death of a president was on December 26,2006 with the death of Gerald Ford. William Henry Harrison spent the shortest time in office, dying 31 days after taking office in 1841. Franklin D. Roosevelt served the longest, over years, before dying early in his fourth term in 1945. Of the individuals elected as president, four died in office of natural causes, four were assassinated, the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution put Tylers precedent into law in 1967. It also established a mechanism by which an intra-term vacancy in the presidency could be filled. Richard Nixon was the first president to fill a vacancy under this Provision when he appointed Gerald Ford to the office, later, Ford became the second to do so when he appointed Nelson Rockefeller to succeed him. Previously, a vacancy was left unfilled. Throughout most of its history, politics of the United States have been dominated by political parties, the Constitution is silent on the issue of political parties, and at the time it came into force in 1789, there were no parties. Soon after the 1st Congress convened, factions began rallying around dominant Washington Administration officials, such as Alexander Hamilton and he was, and remains, the only U. S. president never to be affiliated with a political party. Since Washington, every president has been affiliated with a party at the time they assumed office. Four presidents held other high U. S. federal offices after leaving the presidency, several presidents campaigned unsuccessfully for other U. S. state or federal elective offices after leaving the presidency. Additionally, one president, John Tyler, served in the government of the Confederate States during the American Civil War

31.
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
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Lincoln was the third American president to die in office, and the first to be murdered. An unsuccessful attempt had made on Andrew Jackson 30 years prior, in 1835. The assassination of Lincoln was planned and carried out by the stage actor John Wilkes Booth. By simultaneously eliminating the top three people in the administration, Booth and his co-conspirators hoped to disrupt the United States government. As the President was watching the play, Booth shot Lincoln from behind at a distance of three or four feet, hitting him in the back of the head. At 7,22 a. m. the following day, the rest of the conspirators plot failed, Powell only managed to wound Seward, while Atzerodt, Johnsons would-be assassin, lost his nerve and fled. Booth made an escape, resulting in a lengthy manhunt that ended in his death. Several other conspirators were tried and hanged. The funeral and burial of Abraham Lincoln was a period of extended national mourning, John Wilkes Booth, originally from Maryland, was a proud Southerner and an outspoken Confederate sympathizer. In late 1860, Booth was initiated in the pro-Confederate Knights of the Golden Circle in Baltimore, born into a family of well-known stage actors, Booth had become a famous actor and a nationally recognized celebrity in his own right by the time of the assassination. In March 1864, Ulysses S. Grant, the general of all the Unions armies. As harsh as it may have been on the prisoners of both sides, Grant realized the exchange was prolonging the war by returning soldiers to the outnumbered and manpower-starved South. John Wilkes Booth conceived a plan to kidnap President Lincoln and deliver him to the Confederate Army, Booth recruited Samuel Arnold, George Atzerodt, David Herold, Michael OLaughlen, Lewis Powell, and John Surratt to help him. Surratts mother, Mary Surratt, left her tavern in Surrattsville, Maryland and moved to a house in Washington, while Booth and Lincoln were not personally acquainted, Lincoln had seen Booth in The Marble Heart at Fords on November 9,1863. Subsequently Lincoln sent a invitation backstage inviting Booth to visit the White House, afterwards, actor Frank Mordaunt stated that Booth evaded multiple invitations from the president. Lincoln was an admirer of the man who assassinated him and that actor was John Wilkes Booth. Booth attended Lincolns second inauguration on March 4,1865, as the invited guest of his secret fiancée Lucy Hale, daughter of John P. Hale, soon to become United States Ambassador to Spain. Booth afterwards wrote in his diary, What an excellent chance I had, if I wished, on March 17,1865, Booth informed his conspirators that Lincoln would be attending a play, Still Waters Run Deep, at Campbell Military Hospital

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History of the United States Democratic Party
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The Democratic Party of the United States is the oldest voter-based political party in the world, tracing its heritage back to the 1820s. During the Second Party System, from 1832 to the mid-1850s, under presidents Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, James K. Polk, both parties worked hard to build grassroots organizations and maximize the turnout of voters, which often reached 80 percent or 90 percent. Both parties used patronage extensively to finance their operations, which included emerging big city political machines as well as networks of newspapers. The Democratic party was a proponent for farmers across the country, urban workers and it was especially attractive to Irish immigrants who increasingly controlled the party machinery in the cities. The party was less attractive to businessmen, plantation owners, Evangelical Protestants. The party advocated westward expansion, Manifest Destiny, greater equality among all white men, from the start of the Democratic party which was in 1828, 6th President John Quincy Adams was a Democratic-Republican, and he was not a slave-holder. The 7th through 15th Presidents were either Democratic or Whig and all slaveholders, finally, 16th President Abraham Lincoln was a Republican and the only non-slave-holding President, other than John and John Quincy Adams. Thus in 1860 the Civil War began between the mostly-Republican North against the mostly-Democratic, slaveholding South, the Democrats elected only two presidents to four terms of office for 72 years, Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson. The Party was split between the Bourbon Democrats, representing Eastern business interests, and the elements comprising poor farmers in the South. The agrarian element, marching behind the slogan of free silver, captured the Party in 1896, both Bryan and Wilson were leaders of the Progressive Movement, 1890s–1920s. Starting with 32nd President Franklin D. Eisenhower. S, important Democratic progressive/liberal leaders included Presidents, 33rd – Harry S Truman, and 36th – Lyndon B. Since the Presidential Election of 1976, Democrats have won five out of the last ten presidential elections, winning in the elections of 1976,1992 and 1996. The modern Democratic Party emerged in the 1830s from former factions of the Democratic-Republican Party and it was built by Martin Van Buren who assembled a cadre of politicians in every state behind war hero Andrew Jackson of Tennessee. The spirit of Jacksonian Democracy animated the party from the early 1830s to the 1850s, shaping the Second Party System, the new Democratic Party became a coalition of farmers, city-dwelling laborers, and Irish Catholics. Behind the party platforms, acceptance speeches of candidates, editorials, pamphlets and stump speeches, as Norton explains, The Democrats represented a wide range of views but shared a fundamental commitment to the Jeffersonian concept of an agrarian society. They viewed the government as the enemy of individual liberty. The 1824 corrupt bargain had strengthened their suspicion of Washington politics, Jacksonians feared the concentration of economic and political power. They believed that government intervention in the economy benefited special-interest groups and their definition of the proper role of government tended to be negative, and Jacksons political power was largely expressed in negative acts

33.
Secession in the United States
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Threats and aspirations to secede from the United States, or arguments justifying secession, have been a feature of the countrys politics almost since its birth. Some have argued for secession as a right and others as from a natural right of revolution. In Texas v. White, the United States Supreme Court ruled unilateral secession unconstitutional and this movement collapsed in 1865 with the defeat of Confederate forces by Union armies in the American Civil War. A2008 Zogby International poll found that 22% of Americans believed that any state or region has the right to peaceably secede, a 2014 Reuters/Ipsos poll showed 24% of Americans supported their state seceding from the union if necessary, 53% opposed the idea. Republicans were somewhat more supportive than Democrats, mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing. A design to them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government. He observed that the case can be made that no result of the war was more important than the destruction, once, however, during the founding era, many a public figure. Declared that the states could interpose their powers between their citizens and the power of the government, and talk of secession was not unknown. But according to McDonald, to avoid resorting to the violence that had accompanied the Revolution, in effect, the Constitution completed and perfected the Revolution. Whatever the intentions of the Founders, threats of secession and disunion were a constant in the discourse of Americans preceding the Civil War. Disunion connoted the dissolution of the failure of the Founders efforts to establish a stable. For many Americans in the North and the South, disunion was a nightmare, and yet, for many other Americans, disunion served as the main instrument by which they could achieve their political goals. In late 1777 the Second Continental Congress approved the Articles of Confederation for ratification by the individual states, the confederation government was administered de facto by the Congress under the provisions of the approved draft of the Articles until they achieved ratification—and de jure status—in early 1781. In 1786 delegates of five called for a convention of delegates in Philadelphia to amend the Articles—which would require unanimous consent of the thirteen states. The delegates to the Philadelphia Convention convened and deliberated from May to September 1787, instead of pursuing their official charge they returned a draft Constitution, proposed for constructing and administering a new federal—later also known as national—government. In effect, the delegates proposed to abandon and replace the Articles of Confederation rather than amend them, one explanation was that the Articles of Confederation simply failed to protect the vital interests of the individual states. Necessity then, rather than legality, was the factor in abandoning the Articles

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Freedmen
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A freedman or freedwoman is a former slave who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, slaves were freed either by manumission or emancipation, a fugitive slave is one who escaped slavery by fleeing. Rome differed from Greek city-states in allowing freed slaves to become plebeian citizens, the act of freeing a slave was called manumissio, from manus, hand, and missio, the act of releasing. After manumission, a slave who had belonged to a Roman citizen enjoyed not only freedom from ownership. A slave who had acquired libertas was known as a libertus in relation to his former master, as a social class, freed slaves were liberti, though later Latin texts used the terms libertus and libertini interchangeably. Libertini were not entitled to public office or state priesthoods. During the early Empire, however, freedmen held key positions in the government bureaucracy, any future children of a freedman would be born free, with full rights of citizenship. The Claudian Civil Service set a precedent whereby freedmen could be used as servants in the Roman bureaucracy. In addition, Claudius passed legislation concerning slaves, including a law stating that sick slaves abandoned by their owners became freedmen if they recovered, the emperor was criticized for using freedmen in the Imperial Courts. Some freedmen enjoyed enormous success and became quite wealthy, the brothers who owned House of the Vettii, one of the biggest and most magnificent houses in Pompeii, are thought to have been freedmen. A freedman who became rich and influential might still be looked down on by the aristocracy as a vulgar nouveau riche. Trimalchio, a character in the Satyricon of Petronius, is a caricature of such a freedman, for centuries Arab slave traders took and transported an estimated 10 to 15 million sub-Saharan Africans to slavery in North Africa and the Middle East. They also enslaved Europeans from coastal areas and the Balkans, many Arabs took women slaves as concubines in their harems. In the patrilineal societies, mixed-race children of concubines and Arab men were considered free and were given inheritance rights related to their fathers property. In the United States, the freedmen and freedwomen refer chiefly to former slaves emancipated during and after the American Civil War, by the Emancipation Proclamation. Slaves freed before the war, usually by individual manumissions, often in wills, were referred to as Free Negroes or free blacks. There were numerous such families formed in the Upper South before the Revolution, for the first two decades after the Revolution, thousands of slaves were freed in the Upper South, and most northern states abolished slavery, some on a gradual basis. In Louisiana and other areas of the former New France, free people of color were classified in French as gens de couleur libres and they were born to African or African-European mothers and white fathers of mixed-race African and French or other European ancestry

35.
History of the United States Republican Party
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The Republican Party, also commonly called the GOP, is one of the worlds oldest extant political parties. It is the second oldest existing political party in the United States after its primary rival, the Democratic Party. The Party had almost no presence in the Southern United States, with its election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, and its success in guiding the Union to victory and abolishing slavery, the party came to dominate the national political scene until 1932. The Republican Party was based on northern white Protestants, businessmen, small business owners, professionals, factory workers, farmers and it was pro-business, supporting banks, the gold standard, railroads, and high tariffs to protect factory workers and grow industry faster. Under William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, it emphasized a foreign policy. The GOP lost its majorities during the Great Depression, instead, the Democrats under Franklin D. Roosevelt formed a winning New Deal coalition, which was dominant from 1932 through 1964. That coalition collapsed in the mid-1960s, partly because of white Southern Democrats disaffection with passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Republicans won five of the six presidential elections from 1968 to 1988, with Ronald Reagan as the partys iconic conservative hero. The GOP expanded its base throughout the South after 1968, largely due to its strength among socially conservative white Evangelical Protestants and traditionalist Roman Catholics. The Republican Partys transforming leader by 1980 was Reagan, whose conservative policies called for reduced government spending and regulation, lower taxes, and his influence upon the party persists, as nearly every GOP speaker still reveres him. This includes current US President Donald Trump, who utilized his own version of Reagans Make America Great Again slogan during the 2016 US Election. Social scientists Theodore Caplow et al. argue, The Republican party, nationally, moved from right-center toward the center in the 1940s and 1950s, then moved right again in the 1970s and 1980s. The Republican party began as a coalition of anti-slavery Conscience Whigs and Free Soil Democrats opposed to the Kansas–Nebraska Act and this change was viewed by Free Soil and Abolitionist Northerners as an aggressive, expansionist maneuver by the slave-owning South. The Act was supported by all Southerners, by Northern Doughface Democrats, in the North, the old Whig Party was almost defunct. The opponents were motivated and began forming a new party. The new party went well beyond the issue of slavery in the territories and it envisioned modernizing the United States—emphasizing giving free western land to farmers as opposed to letting slave owners buy up the best lands, expanded banking, more railroads, and factories. They vigorously argued that free labor was superior to slavery. The Republicans absorbed the traditions of its members, most of whom had been Whigs. Many Democrats who joined were rewarded with governorships, or seats in the U. S. Senate, or House of Representatives

36.
Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
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The Houses primary charge against Johnson was with violation of the Tenure of Office Act, passed by Congress the previous year. Specifically, he had removed Edwin McMasters Stanton, the Secretary of War, from office, contrary to popular belief, Johnson was not impeached for temporarily replacing Stanton with General Ulysses Grant earlier while Congress was not in session. The House formally agreed to the articles of impeachment on March 2,1868, the trial in the Senate began three days later, with Chief Justice of the United States Salmon P. Chase presiding. The first vote on one of the impeachment articles concluded on May 16 with a failure to convict Johnson. A ten-day recess was called before attempting to convict him on additional articles, the 35-to-19 votes on the three articles actually voted on were all one short of the required two-thirds needed for conviction. This was the first impeachment of an incumbent President since creation of the office in 1789, there would not be another serious attempt to impeach a President for 106 years when, during the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon resigned from office, rather than face impeachment and trial. The only other impeachment trial of a President would occur 131 years later with the impeachment of Bill Clinton, tension between the executive and legislative branches had been high since shortly after Johnsons ascension to the White House upon the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Though a Southerner himself, Johnson had been a fierce and unrelenting critic of the Southern secession that had sparked the Civil War in the first place, prior to his murder, Lincoln had favored a very moderate and lenient plan for Reconstruction. Instead, Johnson unexpectedly switched course, rejecting the Radicals, Johnson also vetoed legislation that extended civil rights and financial support for the former slaves. Congress was able to only a few of his vetoes. In August and September 1866, Johnson destroyed his own political support on a tour of Northern states that became known as the Swing Around the Circle. Contrary to Johnsons hopes, the elections led to veto-proof Republican majorities in Congress. To ensure that Stanton would not be replaced, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act in 1867 over Johnsons veto, however, the act was written specifically with Stanton in mind. Grant, then serving as Commanding General of the Army, Secretary of War ad interim, Johnson and Grant would later disagree on an understanding between the two of them. Johnsons purpose was to create a case to test the constitutionality of the Tenure Act. Grant later claimed there was no such agreement, on January 7,1868, the Senate passed a resolution of non-concurrence with Stantons dismissal. Grant wrote his letter that same day and vacated the office. Consequently, Stanton re-occupied the office of the Secretary of War, at a cabinet meeting the following day, Grant made stammering, unintelligible excuses for failing to pre-notify Johnson

37.
Tennessee House of Representatives
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The Tennessee House of Representatives is the lower house of the Tennessee General Assembly, the state legislature of the U. S. state of Tennessee. According to the constitution of 1870, this body is to consist of 99 members elected for two-year terms. In every even-numbered year, elections for state representative are conducted simultaneously with the elections for U. S, representative and other offices, the primary election being held on the first Thursday in August. Members are elected from single-member districts, districts are required to be reapportioned every ten years following the federal census in order to be of substantially equal population. However, from 1902 until 1962, the General Assembly ignored this provision and it was estimated that by that point that some districts in the Memphis area had approximately ten times the population of some in rural areas. In 1962 this issue was taken to court, subsequent litigation has further refined the rules regarding this, in the late 1990s a majority-black district in rural West Tennessee was required to be created. The Speaker of the House of Representatives is the officer of the House. The Speaker is elected to a term at the beginning of the 1st half of each session of the Tennessee General Assembly. Additionally, the Speaker is second in line for succession to the governorship, after the Speaker of the Senate, the Speaker appoints members to all committees as well. Even though the Speaker does not have to make committee assignments proportional to the party composition, usually, consideration of the abilities, preferences, party representation, and seniority of the members are taken into account. The chairperson, vice chairperson, and secretary of each committee also are chosen by the Speaker, the Speaker is a voting member of all standing committees of the House, as is the Speaker pro Tempore. Additionally, the Speaker is in charge of all facilities, professional and clerical staff, the current Speaker is Beth Harwell of Nashville

38.
Tennessee Senate
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The Tennessee Senate is the upper house of the U. S. state of Tennessees state legislature, which is known formally as the Tennessee General Assembly. The Tennessee Senate, according to the constitution of 1870, is composed of 33 members. Senators are to be elected from districts of equal population. In 1921, Anna Lee Keys Worley became the first women to serve in the Tennessee Senate, until 1966, Tennessee state senators served two-year terms. That year the system was changed, by amendment, to allow four-year terms. In that year, senators in even-numbered districts were elected to two-year terms and this created a staggered system in which only half of the senate is up for election at any one time. Districts are to be sequentially and consecutively numbered, the scheme basically runs from east to west, the Senate elects one of its own members as Speaker, the Speaker automatically becomes Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee. The current Speaker of the Senate and Lieutenant Governor is Randy McNally, one of the main duties of the Speaker is to preside over the Senate and make Senate committee appointments. The Speaker also controls staffing and office space with Senate staff, the Speaker serves as an ex-officio member of all standing committees

39.
Homestead Bill
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The Homestead Acts were several United States federal laws that gave an applicant ownership of land, typically called a homestead, at little or no cost. The first of the acts, the Homestead Act of 1862, any adult who had never taken up arms against the U. S. government could apply. Women and immigrants who had applied for citizenship were eligible, the 1866 Act explicitly included and encouraged blacks to participate. Several additional laws were enacted in the half of the 19th. The Southern Homestead Act of 1866 sought to land ownership inequalities in the south during Reconstruction. The Timber Culture Act of 1873 granted land to a claimant who was required to plant trees—the tract could be added to a homestead claim and had no residency requirement. The Kinkaid Amendment of 1904 granted a section to new homesteaders settling in western Nebraska. An amendment to the Homestead Act of 1862, the Enlarged Homestead Act, was passed in 1909, another amended act, the national Stock-Raising Homestead Act, was passed in 1916 and again increased the land involved, this time to 640 acres. The Homestead Act of 1860 did pass in Congress, but it was vetoed by President James Buchanan, after the Southern states seceded from the Union in 1861, the bill passed and was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln. Daniel Freeman became the first person to file a claim under the new act, between 1862 and 1934, the federal government granted 1.6 million homesteads and distributed 270,000,000 acres of federal land for private ownership. This was a total of 10% of all land in the United States, Homesteading was discontinued in 1976, except in Alaska, where it continued until 1986. About 40% of the applicants who started the process were able to complete it, the Donation Land Claim Act allowed settlers to claim land in the Oregon Territory, then including the modern states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and parts of Wyoming. Settlers were able to claim 320 or 640 acres of land for free between 1850 and 1854, and then at a cost of $1.25 per acres until the law expired in 1855. Southern Democrats had continually fought previous homestead law proposals, as they feared free land would attract European immigrants, after the South seceded and their delegates left Congress in 1861, the Republicans and other supporters from the upper South passed a homestead act. The intent of the first Homestead Act, passed in 1862, was to liberalize the homesteading requirements of the Preemption Act of 1841 and its leading advocates were Andrew Johnson, George Henry Evans and Horace Greeley. The homestead was an area of land in the West granted to any US citizen willing to settle on. The law required a three-step procedure, file an application, improve the land, and file for deed of title. Any citizen who had never taken up arms against the U. S. government and was at least 21 years old or the head of a household, could file an application to claim a land grant

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Southern United States
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The Southern United States, commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South, is a region of the United States of America. The South does not fully match the geographic south of the United States, arizona and New Mexico, which are geographically in the southern part of the country, are rarely considered part, while West Virginia, which separated from Virginia in 1863, commonly is. Some scholars have proposed definitions of the South that do not coincide neatly with state boundaries, while the states of Delaware and Maryland, as well as the District of Columbia permitted slavery prior to the start of the Civil War, they remained with the Union. However, the United States Census Bureau puts them in the South, usually, the South is defined as including the southeastern and south-central United States. The region is known for its culture and history, having developed its own customs, musical styles, and cuisines, the Southern ethnic heritage is diverse and includes strong European, African, and some Native American components. Since the late 1960s, black people have many offices in Southern states, especially in the coastal states of Virginia. Historically, the South relied heavily on agriculture, and was rural until after 1945. It has since become more industrialized and urban and has attracted national and international migrants, the American South is now among the fastest-growing areas in the United States. Houston is the largest city in the Southern United States, sociological research indicates that Southern collective identity stems from political, demographic, and cultural distinctiveness from the rest of the United States. The region contains almost all of the Bible Belt, an area of high Protestant church attendance and predominantly conservative, indeed, studies have shown that Southerners are more conservative than non-Southerners in several areas, including religion, morality, international relations and race relations. Apart from its climate, the experience in the South increasingly resembles the rest of the nation. The arrival of millions of Northerners and millions of Hispanics meant the introduction of cultural values, the process has worked both ways, however, with aspects of Southern culture spreading throughout a greater portion of the rest of the United States in a process termed Southernization. The question of how to define the subregions in the South has been the focus of research for nearly a century, as defined by the United States Census Bureau, the Southern region of the United States includes sixteen states. As of 2010, an estimated 114,555,744 people, or thirty-seven percent of all U. S. residents, lived in the South, the nations most populous region. Other terms related to the South include, The Old South, the New South, usually including the South Atlantic States. The Solid South, region largely controlled by the Democratic Party from 1877 to 1964, before that, blacks were elected to national office and many to local office through the 1880s, Populist-Republican coalitions gained victories for Fusionist candidates for governors in the 1890s. Includes at least all the 11 former Confederate States, Southeastern United States, usually including the Carolinas, the Virginias, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. The Deep South, various definitions, usually including Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, occasionally, parts of adjoining states are included

41.
Confederate States of America
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The Confederate States, officially the Confederate States of America, commonly referred to as the Confederacy, was a breakaway country of 11 secessionist slave states existing from 1861 to 1865. It was never recognized as an Independent country, although it achieved belligerent status by Britain. A new Confederate government was established in February 1861 before Lincoln took office in March, after the Civil War began in April, four slave states of the Upper South – Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina – also declared their secession and joined the Confederacy. The government of the United States rejected the claims of secession, the Civil War began with the April 12,1861, Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter, a Union fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. In spring 1865, after four years of fighting which led to an estimated 620,000 military deaths, all the Confederate forces surrendered. Jefferson Davis later lamented that the Confederacy had disappeared in 1865, Missouri and Kentucky were represented by partisan factions from those states, while the legitimate governments of those two states retained formal adherence to the Union. Also fighting for the Confederacy were two of the Five Civilized Tribes located in Indian Territory and a new, but uncontrolled, Confederate Territory of Arizona. Efforts by certain factions in Maryland to secede were halted by federal imposition of law, while Delaware, though of divided loyalty. A Unionist government in parts of Virginia organized the new state of West Virginia. With the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1,1863, the Union made abolition of slavery a war goal, as Union forces moved southward, large numbers of plantation slaves were freed. Many joined the Union lines, enrolling in service as soldiers, teamsters and laborers, the most notable advance was Shermans March to the Sea in late 1864. Much of the Confederacys infrastructure was destroyed, including telegraphs, railroads, plantations in the path of Shermans forces were severely damaged. Internal movement became increasingly difficult for Southerners, weakening the economy and these losses created an insurmountable disadvantage in men, materiel, and finance. Public support for Confederate President Jefferson Daviss administration eroded over time due to repeated military reverses, economic hardships, after four years of campaigning, Richmond was captured by Union forces in April 1865. Shortly afterward, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, President Davis was captured on May 10,1865, and jailed in preparation for a treason trial that was ultimately never held. The U. S. government began a process known as Reconstruction which attempted to resolve the political and constitutional issues of the Civil War. By 1877, the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction in the former Confederate states, Confederate veterans had been temporarily disenfranchised by Reconstruction policy. The prewar South had many areas, the war left the entire region economically devastated by military action, ruined infrastructure

42.
Presidential Reconstruction
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Johnson followed a lenient policy toward ex-Confederates. Lincolns last speeches show that he was leaning toward supporting the enfranchisement of all freedmen, whereas Johnson was opposed to this. A Republican coalition came to power in all the southern states and set out to transform the society by setting up a free labor economy, using the U. S. Army. The Bureau protected the rights of freedmen, negotiated labor contracts. Thousands of Northerners came South as missionaries, teachers, businessmen, rebuilding the rundown railroad system was a major strategy, but it collapsed when a nationwide depression struck the economy. The Radicals in the House of Representatives, frustrated by Johnsons opposition to Congressional Reconstruction, filed impeachment charges, in early 1866, Congress passed the Freedmens Bureau and Civil Rights Bills and sent them to Johnson for his signature. Meanwhile, self-styled Conservatives strongly opposed reconstruction and they alleged widespread corruption by the Carpetbaggers, excessive state spending and ruinous taxes. Southern democrats and conservatives violently counterattacked and had regained power in each redeemed Southern state by 1877, meanwhile, public support for Reconstruction policies, requiring continued supervision of the South, faded in the North, as voters decided that the Civil War and years of conflict should stop. Reconstruction was a significant chapter in the history of civil rights in the United States, in the different states Reconstruction began and ended at different times, federal Reconstruction ended with the Compromise of 1877. In recent decades most historians follow Foner in dating the Reconstruction of the south as starting in 1863 rather than 1865, Reconstruction policies were debated in the North when the war began, and commenced in earnest after Lincolns Emancipation Proclamation, issued on January 1,1863. As Confederate states came back under control of the US Army, President Abraham Lincoln set up reconstructed governments in Tennessee, Arkansas and he experimented by giving land to blacks in South Carolina. By fall 1865, the new President Andrew Johnson declared the war goals of national unity, Republicans in Congress, refusing to accept Johnsons lenient terms, rejected new members of Congress, some of whom had been high-ranking Confederate officials a few months before. Johnson broke with the Republicans after vetoing two key bills that supported the Freedmens Bureau and provided federal civil rights to the freedmen and that same year, Congress removed civilian governments in the South, and placed the former Confederacy under the rule of the U. S. Army. In ten states, coalitions of freedmen, recent black and white arrivals from the North, Conservative opponents called the Republican regimes corrupt and instigated violence toward freedmen and whites who supported Reconstruction. Most of the violence was carried out by members of the Ku Klux Klan, Klan members attacked and intimidated blacks seeking to exercise their new civil rights, as well as Republican politicians in the south favoring those civil rights. One such politician murdered by the Klan on the eve of the 1868 presidential election was Republican Congressman James M. Hinds of Arkansas, widespread violence in the south led to federal intervention by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1871, which suppressed the Klan. Nevertheless, white Democrats, calling themselves Redeemers, regained control of the state by state, sometimes using fraud. The end of Reconstruction was a process, and the period of Republican control ended at different times in different states

President of the United States
–
The President of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president directs the executive branch of the government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces. The president is considered to be one of the worlds most powerful political figures, the role includes being the commander-

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Incumbent Barack Obama since January 20, 2009 (2009-01-20)

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Presidential Seal

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Obama signing legislation at the Resolute desk

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Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, successfully preserved the Union during the American Civil War

Vice President of the United States
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The executive power of both the vice president and the president is granted under Article Two, Section One of the Constitution. The vice president is elected, together with the president. The Office of the Vice President of the United States assists, as the president of the United States Senate, the vice president votes only when it is necessary to

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Incumbent Joe Biden since January 20, 2009

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Vice Presidential seal

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John Tyler was the first vice president to assume the presidency following the death of his predecessor. In doing so, he insisted that he was the president, not merely an acting president.

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President Lyndon Johnson is sworn in, following the assassination of President John Kennedy.

Abraham Lincoln
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Abraham Lincoln was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its Civil War—its bloodiest war and perhaps its greatest moral, constitutional, in doing so, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened

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Lincoln in 1863, aged 54

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The young Lincoln in sculpture at Senn Park, Chicago.

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1864 photo of President Lincoln with youngest son, Tad

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Lincoln depicted protecting a Native American from his own men in a scene often related about Lincoln's service during the Black Hawk War.

Ulysses S. Grant
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Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States. As Commanding General, Grant worked closely with President Abraham Lincoln to lead the Union Army to victory over the Confederacy in the American Civil War and he implemented Congressional Reconstruction, often at odds with President Andrew Johnson. His presidency has often criticized fo

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Grant during the mid-1870s

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Grant's birthplace in Point Pleasant, Ohio

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Second lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant in full dress uniform in 1843

Hannibal Hamlin
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Hannibal Hamlin was an American attorney and politician from the state of Maine. In a public career that spanned over 50 years, he is most notable for having served as the 15th Vice President of the United States. The first Republican to hold the office, Hamlin served from 1861 to 1865, a native of Paris, Maine, Hamlin was a descendant of an Englis

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Hannibal Hamlin

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Hamlin in early middle age (30s or 40s).

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1860 election campaign button for Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin. The other side of the button has Lincoln's portrait.

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Hamlin in his elder years

Schuyler Colfax
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Schuyler Colfax Jr. was a journalist, businessman, and politician from Indiana. He served as a United States Representative, Speaker of the House of Representatives, to date, he is one of only two Americans to have served as both House speaker and vice president. Colfax was known for his opposition to slavery while serving in Congress, in January 1

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Schuyler Colfax

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Vice President Schuyler Colfax

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Governing bodies

United States Senate
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The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress which, along with the House of Representatives, the lower chamber, composes the legislature of the United States. The composition and powers of the Senate are established by Article One of the United States Constitution. S. From 1789 until 1913, Senators were appointed by t

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United States Senate

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Seal of the U.S. Senate

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The Senate side of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.

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A typical Senate desk

Tennessee
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Tennessee is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th largest and the 16th most populous of the 50 United States, Tennessee is bordered by Kentucky and Virginia to the north, North Carolina to the east, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to the south, and Arkansas and Missouri to the west. The Appalachia

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Monument near the ancient site of Tanasi in Monroe County

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Flag

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View from atop Mount Le Conte in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, April 2007

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Autumn in Tennessee. Roadway to Lindsey Lake in David Crockett State Park, located a half mile west of Lawrenceburg

William Gannaway Brownlow
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William Gannaway Parson Brownlow was an American newspaper editor, minister, and politician. He served as Governor of Tennessee from 1865 to 1869 and as a United States Senator from Tennessee from 1869 to 1875, at the same time, Brownlow was successfully building a large base of fiercely loyal subscribers. Brownlow returned to Tennessee in 1863 and

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William Gannaway Brownlow

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Signature

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Engraving from Brownlow's book The Great Iron Wheel Examined, showing a Baptist minister changing clothes in front of horrified women after an Immersion. Attacks like this were typical of Brownlow's work.

David M. Key
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David McKendree Key was a Democratic U. S. Senator from Tennessee from 1875 to 1877 as well as the U. S, Postmaster General under President Hayes, and a United States federal judge. Key was born in Greene County, Tennessee, the son of Reverend John, in 1826 the family moved to Monroe County where Key was reared, graduating from Hiwassee College in

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David McKendree Key

James C. Jones
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James Chamberlain Jones was an American politician who served as the Governor of Tennessee from 1841 to 1845, and as a United States Senator from Tennessee from 1851 to 1857. A Whig, Jones twice defeated rising politician James K. Polk for the governorship and he was the first native-born Tennessean to be elected governor. Joness first gubernatoria

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James C. Jones

David T. Patterson
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David Trotter Patterson was a United States Senator from Tennessee at the beginning of the Reconstruction Period. He presented his credentials to the Senate on July 26, but they were challenged, david Trotter Patterson was born at Cedar Creek, near Greeneville, Tennessee, on February 28,1818. He attended the schools and later Greeneville College fo

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David Trotter Patterson

Governor of Tennessee
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The Governor of Tennessee is the head of government of the U. S. state of Tennessee. The governor is the official in Tennessee state government who is directly elected by the voters of the entire state. The current governor is Bill Haslam, a Republican, Haslam won election in November 2010 and took office on January 15,2011. The Tennessee Constitut

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Incumbent Bill Haslam since January 15, 2011

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Flag of the Governor

Isham G. Harris
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Isham Green Harris was an American politician who served as Governor of Tennessee from 1857 to 1862, and as a U. S. Senator from 1877 until his death and he was the states first governor from West Tennessee. Harris rose to prominence in politics in the late 1840s when he campaigned against the anti-slavery initiatives of northern Whigs. He was elec

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Photograph of Harris by Mathew Brady

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Portrait of Harris by Washington B. Cooper

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Harris, photographed as a member of General Albert Sidney Johnston 's staff during the Civil War

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Caricature of Harris that appeared in Puck magazine in 1886

List of Governors of Tennessee
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This is a list of people who have served as Governor of Tennessee. The governors term in office is limited by the Tennessee state constitution, the first constitution, enacted in 1796, set a term of two years for the governor and provided that no person could serve as governor for more than six years in any eight-year period. The term of office was

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Incumbent Bill Haslam since January 15, 2011

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Flag of the Governor

William B. Campbell
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William Bowen Campbell was an American politician and soldier. He served as Governor of Tennessee from 1851 to 1853, and was the states last Whig governor and he also served four terms in the United States House of Representatives, from 1837 to 1843, and from 1866 to 1867. During the Mexican-American War, Campbell commanded the First Regiment Tenne

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Portrait of Campbell by Washington B. Cooper

United States House of Representatives
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The United States House of Representatives is the lower chamber of the United States Congress which, along with the Senate, composes the legislature of the United States. The composition and powers of the House are established by Article One of the United States Constitution, since its inception in 1789, all representatives are elected popularly. T

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United States House of Representatives

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Seal of the House

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Republican Thomas Brackett Reed, occasionally ridiculed as "Czar Reed", was a U.S. Representative from Maine, and Speaker of the House from 1889 to 1891 and from 1895 to 1899.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller confer with President Barack Obama at the Oval Office in 2009.

Tennessee's 1st congressional district
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The 1st Districts seat in the U. S. House of Representatives has been held by Republicans since 1881. The district was created in 1805 when the At-large seat was divided among multiple districts. S, House of Representatives in 1796 up to the term of Albert Galiton Watkins ending in 1859. Andrew Johnson later ascended to the office of President of t

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Democratic U.S. Representatives Andrew Jackson (1796-1797, at large) and Andrew Johnson (1843-1853, 1st) represented this area and later served as President of the United States

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John Rhea

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Andrew Johnson

Raleigh, North Carolina
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Raleigh is the capital of the state of North Carolina, the seat of Wake County in the United States. Raleigh is known as the City of Oaks for its oak trees. The city covers a area of 142.8 square miles. The U. S. Census Bureau estimated the population as 451,066 as of July 1,2015. It is also one of the cities in the country. The city of Raleigh is

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Downtown Raleigh

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Plan for platting Raleigh by William Christmas, 1792

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Raleigh, North Carolina in 1872

Elizabethton, Tennessee
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Elizabethton is a city in, and the county seat of Carter County, Tennessee, United States. Elizabethton is the site of the first independent American government located west of both the Eastern Continental Divide and the original Thirteen Colonies. The city is also the site of the Transylvania Purchase. It was within the secessionist North Carolina

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Downtown Elizabethton, July 4th parade (2008)

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"The City of Power" electric sign that was erected over the old Elk Avenue Bridge (circa 1912-1913).

Andrew Johnson National Cemetery
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The Andrew Johnson National Cemetery is a United States National Cemetery on the grounds of the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site in Greeneville, Tennessee. Established in 1906, the cemetery was built around the place of Andrew Johnson, the seventeenth President of the United States. Andrew Johnson acquired twenty-three acres outside Greenevill

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Andrew Johnson National Cemetery

Greeneville, Tennessee
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Greeneville is a town in, and the county seat of Greene County, Tennessee, United States. The population as of the 2010 census was 15,062, the town was named in honor of Revolutionary War hero Nathanael Greene. It is the town with this spelling in the United States. The town was the capital of the short-lived State of Franklin in the 18th-century h

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North Main Street in Greeneville

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Big Spring in downtown Greeneville

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Replica of the Capitol of the State of Franklin in Greeneville

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First Presbyterian Church, founded by Rev. Hezekiah Balch and Samuel Doak in 1780

Democratic Party (United States)
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The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The Democrats dominant worldview was once socially conservative and fiscally classical liberalism, while, especially in the rural South, since Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal coalition in the 1930s, the Democrati

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Andrew Jackson was the first Democratic President of the United States

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The three leaders of the Democratic party during the first half of the 20th century: President Woodrow Wilson (nominated in 1912 and '16) Sec. of State William J. Bryan (nominated in 1896, 1900 and 1908), Josephus Daniels, Breckinridge Long, William Phillips, and Franklin D. Roosevelt (nominated for VP in 1920 and for president in 1932, 36,'40 and 44)

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John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States (1961–1963)

National Union Party (United States)
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The National Union Party was the name used by the Republican Party for the national ticket in the 1864 presidential election, held during the Civil War. State Republican parties, for the most part, did not change their name, the temporary name was used to attract War Democrats and Border State Unionists who would not vote for the Republican Party.

Eliza McCardle Johnson
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Eliza McCardle Johnson was the First Lady of the United States and the wife of Andrew Johnson, the 17th President of the United States. Born at Greeneville, Tennessee, the child of John McCardle, a shoemaker. She was raised by her mother in Greeneville, Tennessee. One day in September 1826, Eliza was chatting with classmates from Rhea Academy when

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Eliza McCardle Johnson

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2011 U.S Gold Coin

Jacob Johnson (father of Andrew Johnson)
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Jacob Johnson was the father of Andrew Johnson, the 17th President of the United States. Jacob Johnson was born on April 17,1778, some sources indicate he was born in Newcastle, England and sailed to America around 1795, but others say he was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, and it was his grandfather who came from England. Historian Rev. Nash A. O

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The home of Jacob and Andrew Johnson in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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Jacob Johnson's grave at the Old City Cemetery in Raleigh, North Carolina

Union Army
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The Union Army was the land force that fought for the Union during the American Civil War,1861 to 1865. It included the permanent regular army of the United States, which was augmented by numbers of temporary units consisting of volunteers as well as conscripts. The Union Army fought and eventually defeated the Confederate Army during the war, at l

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The 21st Michigan Infantry, a company of William Tecumseh Sherman 's army

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Flag of the United States from 1863 until 1865.

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Recruiting poster for the First Battalion, New York Mounted Rifles

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Noncommissioned officers of the 93rd New York Infantry

Brigadier general (United States)
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In the United States Armed Forces, brigadier general is a one-star general officer with the pay grade of O-7 in the U. S. Army, U. S. Marine Corps, and U. S. Air Force. Brigadier general ranks above a colonel and below major general, the rank of brigadier general is equivalent to the rank of rear admiral in the other uniformed services. The rank of

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U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, and U.S. Marine Corps rank insignia for brigadier general. Style and method of wear may vary between the services.

American Civil War
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The American Civil War was an internal conflict fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865. The Union faced secessionists in eleven Southern states grouped together as the Confederate States of America, the Union won the war, which remains the bloodiest in U. S. history. Among the 34 U. S. states in February 1861, War broke out in April 1861 whe

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New Orleans the largest cotton exporting port for New England and Great Britain textile mills, shipping Mississippi River Valley goods from North, South and Border states.

List of Presidents of the United States
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The President of the United States is the elected head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces. The president is elected to a four-year term by the people through an Electoral College. Since the office was establi

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1

3.
2

Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
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Lincoln was the third American president to die in office, and the first to be murdered. An unsuccessful attempt had made on Andrew Jackson 30 years prior, in 1835. The assassination of Lincoln was planned and carried out by the stage actor John Wilkes Booth. By simultaneously eliminating the top three people in the administration, Booth and his co

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John Wilkes Booth

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The Assassination of President Lincoln (Currier & Ives, 1865), from left to right: Major Henry Rathbone, Clara Harris, Mary Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, and John Wilkes Booth This print gives the impression that Rathbone saw Booth enter the box and had already risen as Booth fired his weapon. In reality, Rathbone was unaware of Booth's approach and reacted after the shot was fired.

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This photograph (top) of Lincoln delivering his second inaugural address is the only known photograph of the event. Lincoln stands in the center, with papers in his hand. John Wilkes Booth is visible in the photograph, in the top row right of center (White, The Eloquent President). The second photo highlights both Lincoln and Booth from the photo above.

History of the United States Democratic Party
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The Democratic Party of the United States is the oldest voter-based political party in the world, tracing its heritage back to the 1820s. During the Second Party System, from 1832 to the mid-1850s, under presidents Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, James K. Polk, both parties worked hard to build grassroots organizations and maximize the turnout of

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Andrew Jackson, the first Democratic President (1829-1837).

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1837 cartoon shows the Democratic Party as donkey.

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To vote for Douglas in Virginia, a man deposited the ticket issued by the party in the official ballot box.

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Thomas Nast 's January 1870 depiction of the Democratic donkey

Secession in the United States
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Threats and aspirations to secede from the United States, or arguments justifying secession, have been a feature of the countrys politics almost since its birth. Some have argued for secession as a right and others as from a natural right of revolution. In Texas v. White, the United States Supreme Court ruled unilateral secession unconstitutional a

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William Lloyd Garrison—"Henceforth, the watchword of every uncompromising abolitionist, of every friend of God and liberty, must be, both in a religious and political sense — 'NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS'"

Freedmen
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A freedman or freedwoman is a former slave who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, slaves were freed either by manumission or emancipation, a fugitive slave is one who escaped slavery by fleeing. Rome differed from Greek city-states in allowing freed slaves to become plebeian citizens, the act of freeing a slave wa

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Cinerary urn for the freedman Tiberius Claudius Chryseros and two women, probably his wife and daughter

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Old former slave with horn formerly used to call slaves, Texas, 1939. Photo by Russell Lee.

History of the United States Republican Party
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The Republican Party, also commonly called the GOP, is one of the worlds oldest extant political parties. It is the second oldest existing political party in the United States after its primary rival, the Democratic Party. The Party had almost no presence in the Southern United States, with its election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, and its success i

Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
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The Houses primary charge against Johnson was with violation of the Tenure of Office Act, passed by Congress the previous year. Specifically, he had removed Edwin McMasters Stanton, the Secretary of War, from office, contrary to popular belief, Johnson was not impeached for temporarily replacing Stanton with General Ulysses Grant earlier while Cong

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Theodore R. Davis ' illustration of President Johnson's impeachment trial in the Senate, published in Harper's Weekly.

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John A. Bingham and Thaddeus Stevens before the Senate addressing the vote on the president's impeachment by the House.

Tennessee House of Representatives
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The Tennessee House of Representatives is the lower house of the Tennessee General Assembly, the state legislature of the U. S. state of Tennessee. According to the constitution of 1870, this body is to consist of 99 members elected for two-year terms. In every even-numbered year, elections for state representative are conducted simultaneously with

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Tennessee House of Representatives

Tennessee Senate
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The Tennessee Senate is the upper house of the U. S. state of Tennessees state legislature, which is known formally as the Tennessee General Assembly. The Tennessee Senate, according to the constitution of 1870, is composed of 33 members. Senators are to be elected from districts of equal population. In 1921, Anna Lee Keys Worley became the first w

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Senate of Tennessee

Homestead Bill
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The Homestead Acts were several United States federal laws that gave an applicant ownership of land, typically called a homestead, at little or no cost. The first of the acts, the Homestead Act of 1862, any adult who had never taken up arms against the U. S. government could apply. Women and immigrants who had applied for citizenship were eligible,

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Norwegian settlers in 1898 North Dakota in front of their homestead, a sod hut

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Certificate of homestead in Nebraska given under the Homestead Act, 1862.

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Dugout home from a homestead near Pie Town, New Mexico, 1940.

Southern United States
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The Southern United States, commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South, is a region of the United States of America. The South does not fully match the geographic south of the United States, arizona and New Mexico, which are geographically in the southern part of the country, are rarely considered part, while West Virgin

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Texas Hill Country

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The Southern United States as defined by the United States Census Bureau. The "South" and its regions are defined in various ways, however. (See Geography section.)

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Bluegrass region in Kentucky

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Glass Mountains at Glass Mountains State Park, Oklahoma

Confederate States of America
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The Confederate States, officially the Confederate States of America, commonly referred to as the Confederacy, was a breakaway country of 11 secessionist slave states existing from 1861 to 1865. It was never recognized as an Independent country, although it achieved belligerent status by Britain. A new Confederate government was established in Febr

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William Henry Gist, Governor of South Carolina, called the Secessionist Convention.

Presidential Reconstruction
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Johnson followed a lenient policy toward ex-Confederates. Lincolns last speeches show that he was leaning toward supporting the enfranchisement of all freedmen, whereas Johnson was opposed to this. A Republican coalition came to power in all the southern states and set out to transform the society by setting up a free labor economy, using the U. S.

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The southern economy had been ruined by the war. Charleston, South Carolina: Broad Street, 1865

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The ruins of Richmond, Virginia after the American Civil War, newly freed African Americans voting for the first time in 1867, Office of the Freedmen's Bureau in Memphis, Tennessee, Memphis Riots of 1866

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A political cartoon of Andrew Johnson and Abraham Lincoln, 1865, entitled "The Rail Splitter At Work Repairing the Union." The caption reads (Johnson): Take it quietly Uncle Abe and I will draw it closer than ever. (Lincoln): A few more stitches Andy and the good old Union will be mended.

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Monument in honor of the Grand Army of the Republic, organized after the war

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Mordecai Lincoln House on Lincoln Road in Lorane, Berks County, Pennsylvania. Mordecai Lincoln was the Great-Great-Grandfather of President Abraham Lincoln. Built 1733 by M. Lincoln and is about 10 miles from Daniel Boone 's birthplace.

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Sketch of Mordecai Lincoln House, built 1733 and still extant, on the NRHP since 1988

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"An Available Candidate: The One Qualification for a Whig President". Political cartoon about the 1848 presidential election which refers to Zachary Taylor or Winfield Scott, the two leading contenders for the Whig Party nomination in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War. Published by Nathaniel Currier in 1848, digitally restored.

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Horace Greeley 's New York Tribune —the leading Whig paper—endorsed Clay for President and Fillmore for Governor, 1844

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This portrait of Harrison originally showed him in civilian clothes as the congressional delegate from the Northwest Territory in 1800, but the uniform was added after he became famous in the War of 1812.

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Harrison in a copy of an 1835 White House portrait by James Reid Lambdin

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"The United States Senate, A.D. 1850" (engraving by Peter F. Rothermel): Henry Clay takes the floor of the Old Senate Chamber; Vice President Millard Fillmore presides as John C. Calhoun (to the left of the Speaker's chair) and Daniel Webster (seated to the left of Clay) look on.

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Gold Rush California applies to become free state

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Map of free and slave states c. 1856

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Map of Mexico. S. Augustus Mitchell, Philadelphia, 1847. New California is depicted with a north-eastern border at the meridian leading north of the Rio Grande headwaters.

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Certificate for the electoral vote for Rutherford B. Hayes and William A. Wheeler for the State of Louisiana

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Electoral College map showing the results of the 2012 U.S. presidential election. President Barack Obama (D - IL) won the popular vote in 26 states and the District of Columbia (denoted in blue) to capture 332 electoral votes. Former Governor Mitt Romney (R - MA) won the popular vote in 24 states (denoted in red) to capture 206 electoral votes.